BUILDING THE PHILIPPINE MARITIME STATE
From Maritime Nation to Maritime Capability—and from Buyer to Builder
Building the institutions, people, industries and infrastructure of an archipelagic nation
By Karl M. Garcia
Introduction: A Maritime Nation Building a Maritime State
The Philippines is already a maritime nation.
Its islands are connected by seas. Its people have lived from fishing, seafaring, boatbuilding and maritime trade for centuries. Millions of Filipinos work at sea. Ports connect the country to global commerce. Fisheries feed communities. Tourism depends on coastal and marine resources. Energy, transportation, food security, trade and national defense all depend upon the sea.
The problem is not a lack of maritime identity.
The problem is that the Philippines has never consistently converted that identity into national capability.
For much of its modern history, maritime affairs have been treated as separate sectors. Shipping belonged to one set of institutions, fisheries to another, ports to another, environmental protection to another, and maritime security to another. Shipbuilding and repair were largely regarded as commercial activities rather than strategic industrial capabilities. Maritime education often emphasized supplying workers rather than developing the complete ecosystem of engineers, designers, technicians, scientists and managers required by a maritime economy.
That fragmentation is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
The Philippine Maritime Zones Act, the Philippine Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award, Executive Order No. 57 and the strengthening of the National Maritime Council, Coast Guard and Navy modernization, improved maritime-domain awareness, renewed shipbuilding investment and growing public-private cooperation are beginning to connect pieces of a much larger national system.
The objective should not be to invent a new national identity.
It should be to build the capacity of the Philippines to fully function as what it already is:
a maritime and archipelagic nation.
This is where the concept of a maritime state becomes useful.
A maritime state is not a new constitutional form. It is not a replacement for the maritime nation. It describes the institutional capacity of an archipelagic country to organize government, industry and society around the realities of the sea.
A capable maritime state can see what is happening at sea, understand it, decide what to do, act upon it, remain present, and sustain its capabilities over time.
And ultimately, it must be able to build.
The progression is therefore:
Maritime Nation → Maritime Awareness → Maritime Governance → Maritime Presence → Maritime Security → Maritime Infrastructure → Maritime Industry → Maritime Human Capital → Maritime Resilience → Maritime Capability → Maritime Power.
The maritime nation already exists.
The task now is to build the maritime state that allows it to exercise its potential.
I. MANA Mo: The Nation Must Know What It Is
The foundation of a maritime state is not a warship.
It is public understanding.
The Philippines already has a national mechanism for developing that understanding: Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month, or MANA Mo.
Proclamation No. 316, issued in 2017, designated September of every year as MANA Mo to raise national consciousness about maritime and archipelagic issues and policies.
MANA Mo should therefore be more than another government observance.
It should become the public face of the country’s maritime strategy.
This direction was strengthened in 2025 when Memorandum Circular No. 87 directed national government agencies to promote awareness of the Philippines as a Maritime and Archipelagic Nation, encouraged local governments and the private sector to participate, and tasked the National Maritime Council, through the Presidential Office for Maritime Concerns, with developing year-round programs while coordinating the September observance.
That creates an opportunity to turn MANA Mo from a calendar event into a permanent national conversation.
A child learning about the balangay is maritime awareness.
A student visiting a shipyard is maritime awareness.
A fisherman learning sustainable fishing practices is maritime awareness.
A coastal barangay restoring mangroves is maritime awareness.
A university conducting marine research is maritime awareness.
A Filipino learning why the country’s maritime zones matter is maritime awareness.
A company investing in shipbuilding is maritime awareness.
A Coast Guard crew protecting fishermen is maritime awareness.
A Filipino seafarer working abroad is maritime awareness.
The message should be simple:
The sea is not the space between the islands. The sea is what connects the nation.
MANA Mo can connect schools, universities, local governments, fishermen, seafarers, shipyards, shipping companies, scientists, environmental organizations, tourism enterprises, ports, museums, the Coast Guard, Navy and private sector.
Its purpose is ultimately to create something no law, ship or satellite can create by itself:
a maritime national consciousness.
II. From Awareness to Governance
Awareness, however, is only the beginning.
A maritime nation needs institutions capable of acting upon that awareness.
The Philippines already has many of them.
The Philippine Coast Guard, Philippine Navy, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Maritime Industry Authority, National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Philippine Ports Authority, Philippine Space Agency and other agencies possess important maritime responsibilities.
The answer is not necessarily to merge them into one enormous maritime bureaucracy.
The better objective is coordination without destroying specialization.
The Coast Guard should remain the Coast Guard.
The Navy should remain the Navy.
BFAR should remain responsible for fisheries.
MARINA should continue regulating and developing the maritime industry.
NAMRIA should continue its mapping and hydrographic functions.
DENR should continue protecting marine and coastal ecosystems.
The National Maritime Council should provide strategic coordination across government.
The principle should be:
Different institutions. One maritime picture. Coordinated action.
A fishing vessel, Coast Guard ship, research vessel, offshore-energy project, merchant ship and naval patrol may have different missions, but they operate within the same maritime environment.
The state must therefore be able to:
See. Understand. Decide. Act. Remain. Sustain.
And increasingly:
Build.
III. The West Philippine Sea: Protecting Rights Without Making Every Incident a War
The West Philippine Sea is where the maritime state faces one of its most demanding tests.
The Philippines must protect its lawful maritime rights while avoiding unnecessary escalation.
That requires more than military power.
It requires persistent observation, Coast Guard presence, fisheries protection, environmental monitoring, diplomatic engagement, legal documentation, communications and credible public information.
Modern maritime pressure does not always resemble conventional warfare.
It can involve dangerous maneuvering, blocking, water-cannon incidents, swarming, intimidation of fishermen, interference with resupply missions, illegal fishing, environmental damage, misinformation and economic pressure.
These problems require different instruments.
A fisheries violation requires fisheries enforcement.
Pollution requires environmental enforcement and, where appropriate, claims for damages.
A navigation incident may require Coast Guard intervention.
Coercion may require diplomatic protest and international coordination.
A serious security threat may require defense and alliance mechanisms.
The principle should be:
Do not militarize every problem—but do not leave any problem unmanaged.
That is one of the advantages of a capable maritime state.
It possesses enough instruments to respond proportionately, persistently and lawfully.
IV. Ayungin Shoal: The Sierra Madre and the Problem of Permanent Presence
The BRP Sierra Madre demonstrates why maritime strategy cannot be reduced to procurement.
The vessel has served as a Philippine outpost at Ayungin Shoal since 1999. Its strategic importance therefore lies not simply in its age or original military purpose.
Its importance lies in continued Philippine presence.
That makes maintenance, inspection, reinforcement and logistical support matters of national importance.
The Philippines should continue improving the survivability and habitability of the outpost through responsible engineering, corrosion control, structural assessment, communications, power, water and living-support systems.
Modern technology can help.
Underwater cameras, sonar, remotely operated vehicles and other inspection technologies can allow engineers to monitor the vessel and surrounding structures more systematically.
But the larger lesson is clear:
A national maritime presence should never depend indefinitely on one aging platform.
The government should therefore study future options carefully, including modular infrastructure, improved communications, renewable power, water systems, navigational aids, maritime-safety facilities and other structures that could eventually supplement or succeed the vessel where legally, environmentally, diplomatically and technically appropriate.
The objective is not to manufacture confrontation.
It is to ensure continuity.
Presence must become a system, not a single asset.
V. Protecting the Sea Is Part of Maritime Security
A maritime state cannot protect maritime territory while allowing its marine resources to collapse.
Destructive fishing is simultaneously an environmental, economic and security problem.
Illegal fishing can damage coral reefs, reduce fish stocks, destroy breeding grounds and undermine legitimate Filipino fishermen.
Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing can also cross national boundaries, making fisheries management a matter of international cooperation and maritime governance.
The response must therefore combine:
Vessel monitoring + fisheries enforcement + port inspections + catch documentation + community reporting + satellite monitoring + international cooperation + effective penalties.
Marine protected areas, mangrove restoration, coral rehabilitation and artificial reefs can complement enforcement.
They cannot replace it.
The same principle applies to retired maritime assets.
A retired vessel might, after proper preparation, become an artificial reef or maritime heritage site. But it should never be sunk simply because disposal is expensive.
The rule should be:
Ecological purpose first; disposal second.
Every proposed artificial reef should pass engineering, hazardous-material, navigation and ecological assessments before deployment, followed by long-term monitoring and adaptive management.
The project succeeds only if the marine environment benefits.
VI. From Retired Assets to Blue-Economy Infrastructure
The possibility of converting carefully selected retired maritime assets into artificial reefs illustrates a broader opportunity.
International projects such as Dive Bahrain have demonstrated how prepared retired assets can become marine habitats, diving destinations, research sites and tourism attractions.
The Philippines possesses many of the conditions necessary for an appropriate local model: extensive coastlines, diving communities, fisheries, marine research institutions and coastal tourism economies.
A properly prepared vessel could potentially become:
an artificial reef + diving site + research location + maritime heritage attraction + tourism asset + local economic anchor.
But the environmental standard must remain high.
Artificial reefs can alter ecosystems, concentrate fish rather than increase fish populations, interfere with navigation or introduce pollutants if preparation is inadequate.
The Philippine approach should therefore follow a clear sequence:
Asset screening → Hazardous-material removal → Engineering assessment → Ecological assessment → Site approval → Controlled deployment → Monitoring → Adaptive management.
The project succeeds only when science demonstrates that the marine environment and surrounding communities stand to benefit.
VII. Building the Maritime Industrial Base
A maritime state cannot remain permanently dependent on foreign suppliers for every vessel, repair, component and technical service.
This does not mean trying to manufacture everything domestically.
It means developing the capacity to sustain critical maritime capabilities.
The progression should be:
Maintenance → Repair → Overhaul → Engineering → Integration → Local Suppliers → Component Production → Modification → Design.
Renewed shipbuilding investment in Subic, together with established operations such as Tsuneishi in Cebu and other Philippine shipyards, creates an opportunity to rebuild industrial knowledge.
But the goal should not simply be to produce more vessels.
A shipyard should become an industrial anchor.
Around it should grow suppliers of steel fabrication, electrical systems, marine equipment, engines and components, software, communications equipment, coatings, safety systems, logistics and specialized maintenance.
Shipbuilding is therefore not simply about ships.
It is about building an industrial ecosystem.
That ecosystem can support commercial shipping, ferries, fishing vessels, workboats, Coast Guard platforms and, where appropriate, defense requirements.
A shipyard that only assembles imported components creates employment.
A shipbuilding ecosystem that progressively develops suppliers, engineers, tooling, design and integration creates national capability.
VIII. People Are the Industrial Base
The Philippines already possesses a major maritime advantage: its workforce.
Filipino seafarers are recognized globally.
But a maritime state needs more than seafarers.
It needs marine engineers, naval architects, welders, electricians, pipefitters, shipyard managers, robotics specialists, software engineers, marine scientists, maritime lawyers, logistics professionals and systems engineers.
This requires stronger partnerships among government training institutions, universities, shipyards, shipping companies and technology firms.
The progression should be:
Investment → Training → Employment → Experience → Expertise → Philippine Management → Philippine Engineering Capability.
The objective is not merely to supply labor to foreign maritime companies.
It is to create Filipinos capable of eventually managing, designing, integrating, maintaining and improving maritime systems.
That is the difference between having a maritime workforce and having maritime human capital.
IX. From Buyer to Builder
This leads to a fundamental change in procurement philosophy.
Buying a ship should not be the end of a transaction.
It should begin a capability-building process.
Where practical, major acquisitions should include training, technical documentation, maintenance capability, local maintenance and repair capacity, systems integration, local suppliers and meaningful industrial participation.
The Philippines should continue purchasing technologies it cannot yet produce.
There is nothing inherently wrong with buying foreign technology.
The problem arises when every acquisition leaves the country with little more than an imported platform and a maintenance bill.
Every major acquisition should therefore ask:
What Philippine capability will remain after the purchase is completed?
The answer could be trained technicians.
It could be a domestic maintenance facility.
It could be a local supplier.
It could be engineering knowledge.
It could be software capability.
It could be systems-integration expertise.
It could be a Philippine company capable of supporting the next generation of equipment.
The same principle should apply to international partnerships.
Foreign partners can provide ships, aircraft, intelligence, training, technology, financing and industrial cooperation.
But the strategic question should always be:
What remains after the exercise, contract or deployment ends?
If Filipino institutions, workers, engineers and companies are stronger afterward, the partnership has generated national capability.
X. Maritime Infrastructure Is National Infrastructure
Ports, shipyards, ferry terminals, fisheries facilities, logistics networks, communications systems and maritime-energy infrastructure should not be viewed as isolated projects.
They are components of one national system.
That system requires redundancy.
If one port is damaged, another should be capable of absorbing traffic.
If one shipyard becomes unavailable, another should provide essential repair capacity.
If one communications network fails, alternatives should exist.
If one shipping route is disrupted, alternative routes should be available.
This principle matters not only during war.
Typhoons, earthquakes, cyberattacks, accidents, pandemics and economic disruptions can all interrupt maritime networks.
Resilience therefore means:
The system can be damaged without being brought to a standstill.
For an archipelago, this is not a luxury.
It is national survival.
XI. Space, Data and Technology at Sea
Modern maritime capability extends far beyond the coastline.
Satellites can observe enormous areas.
Radar can detect vessels.
AIS can provide information about participating ships.
Drones can extend surveillance.
Underwater systems can inspect vessels and infrastructure.
Artificial intelligence can help identify unusual patterns.
Secure communications can connect agencies and field personnel.
But technology should support human judgment, not replace it.
The objective is not to create an enormous technological system that nobody can effectively operate.
It is to ensure that the right information reaches the right people quickly enough to act.
The basic chain is:
Sensors → Information → Verification → Decision → Action.
The real test of maritime-domain awareness is therefore not how much data the Philippines collects.
It is whether that data improves decisions and produces action.
XII. Maritime Power Includes the Blue Economy
Security and economic development are not opposing objectives.
A fishing community contributes to maritime presence.
A port contributes to national resilience.
A shipyard contributes to strategic industry.
A seafarer represents national human capital.
An offshore-energy project contributes to energy security.
A marine research vessel contributes to national knowledge.
A tourism destination creates coastal employment.
These activities reinforce one another.
Security creates confidence. Confidence attracts investment. Investment creates economic activity. Economic activity creates infrastructure and jobs. Infrastructure and jobs strengthen the maritime nation.
This is the economic foundation of maritime power.
A country does not become maritime simply because it owns warships.
It becomes maritime when its economy, institutions, people, infrastructure and security system can operate effectively across and around the sea.
XIII. Making the Maritime Nation Visible
MANA Mo can connect these otherwise separate activities.
It can connect history with industry.
Fisheries with conservation.
Shipbuilding with employment.
Maritime security with everyday economic life.
Coastal communities with national policy.
Most importantly, it can change how Filipinos imagine their own country.
For too long, the Philippines has sometimes been viewed as a collection of islands separated by water.
The opposite is closer to reality.
The sea is the country’s connecting infrastructure.
It carries people, food, energy, trade, information and culture.
It is simultaneously an economic space, transportation network, ecological system, security environment and part of national identity.
MANA Mo should therefore evolve into a year-round national platform involving schools, universities, local governments, coastal communities, maritime workers, scientists, environmental groups, ports, shipyards, tourism operators, industry and security agencies.
September can remain the focal month.
But maritime awareness should continue throughout the year.
The goal is to make maritime consciousness part of ordinary Philippine civic consciousness.
XIV. The Maritime State Is the Instrument; the Maritime Nation Is the Identity
The distinction must remain clear.
The maritime nation is the Philippines itself: its people, geography, history, culture, economy and relationship with the sea.
The maritime state is the institutional machinery that allows that nation to exercise its interests effectively.
One cannot replace the other.
A maritime nation without capable institutions remains vulnerable.
A maritime state without public understanding becomes a collection of agencies, laws, vessels and equipment without a unifying purpose.
The country needs both.
The nation provides the identity. The state provides the capability.
MANA Mo helps develop the identity.
The National Maritime Council helps coordinate government.
The Coast Guard and Navy provide security capabilities.
BFAR protects fisheries.
MARINA develops the maritime industry.
NAMRIA provides critical mapping and hydrographic capability.
DENR protects ecosystems.
Ports and shipyards provide infrastructure.
Universities and training institutions develop people.
Industry creates investment and technology.
Communities provide local knowledge and participation.
Together, they form a national maritime system.
XV. From Maritime Nation to Maritime Capability
The Philippines therefore does not need a new national identity.
It needs to act more consistently on the identity it already possesses.
The strategic progression is:
Maritime Nation
↓
Maritime Awareness
↓
Maritime Governance
↓
Maritime Presence
↓
Maritime Security
↓
Maritime Infrastructure
↓
Maritime Industry
↓
Maritime Human Capital
↓
Blue-Economy Development
↓
Maritime Resilience
↓
Maritime Capability
↓
Maritime Power
This is why shipbuilding matters.
It is why MANA Mo matters.
It is why the Sierra Madre matters.
It is why fishermen matter.
It is why marine ecosystems matter.
It is why ports matter.
It is why maritime education matters.
It is why satellites, sensors and data matter.
It is why procurement reform matters.
These are not separate projects.
They are different components of the same national system.
Conclusion: Build the System, Not Just the Assets
The Philippines should not seek to become a maritime republic.
It does not need a new political identity.
It already has the more fundamental identity:
The Philippines is a maritime and archipelagic nation.
The task is to build the capacity to live up to that reality.
That means protecting maritime rights through law, diplomacy and presence.
It means knowing what is happening at sea.
It means protecting fishermen and marine resources.
It means responding intelligently and proportionately to coercion and illegal activity.
It means maintaining the Sierra Madre while responsibly preparing for the future of Ayungin.
It means confronting destructive fishing and environmental degradation.
It means using satellites, sensors, communications and data to understand the maritime domain.
It means developing artificial reefs and other marine infrastructure only where science demonstrates that they serve legitimate ecological or public purposes.
It means building ships, repairing ships and progressively designing more of the systems the country depends upon.
It means turning foreign investment into Philippine skills, suppliers, engineering knowledge and management capability.
It means treating ports, shipyards, communications and logistics as national infrastructure.
It means connecting the blue economy with national security.
It means building a maritime workforce that can evolve into a maritime industrial and engineering base.
And it means making MANA Mo more than an annual observance.
MANA Mo should become part of a permanent national conversation about what it means to be Filipino in an archipelago.
The ultimate objective is not to dominate the sea.
It is to become capable of living securely, productively and sustainably with it.
The Philippines should therefore move:
from awareness to capability;
from rights to effective exercise of rights;
from episodic presence to sustained presence;
from vulnerability to resilience;
from disposal to productive reuse;
from buyer to builder;
from fragmented programs to an integrated maritime system.
And ultimately:
from being a maritime nation by geography to being a maritime nation by capability.
The maritime nation already exists.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
“Shipbuilding and repair were largely regarded as commercial activities rather than strategic industrial capabilities.” I think that’s changing.
Section IV suggests the Sierra Madre is the nation’s only national maritime presence. Not true. Pagasa Island, Scarborough, patrols of the smuggling routes, build up of coast guard and navy capabilities . . . suggests there is a national presence, for defense. China is the nation that highlights the Sierra Madre, not the Philippines.
Building a ship building and arms manufacturing capability is indeed important for self-reliance. There are modest initiatives being taken.
Here’s Gemini’s scan of the drone weapons development of the Philippines:
The Philippines is rapidly building its military drone force through a proposed 50 billion pesos (US$810.4 million) modernization allocation for 2027 to boost territorial defense in the South China Sea.
Current and Local Developments
Strategic Goals and Partnerships
Thank you for your coreection on my Sierra Madre assertion. I completely forgot about all the rest. Thanks for the environmental scan .
“Building a ship building and arms manufacturing capability is indeed important for self-reliance. There are modest initiatives being taken.” – JoeAm
No time like the present to start….only 80 years after independence!
My worry is if we have a professional enough armed forces. Ships and arms need soldiers and sailors, good officers and enlisted men/women. I remember that in the 1967 Six Day War, the Egyptians had superior tanks from the Soviet Union, but Israeli fighters in their upgraded WW2 Sherman Tanks defeated them decisively.
To be fair I have complained about knowledge transfer but the trsining component is included in the newer aquisitions. As for the completely stripped and to be upgraded how can training be included for the components yet to be purchased, Do all defense material have per component training, I doubt it. My priblem is you send someone abroad ,when they return they get promoted and reassigned. Chances of happening…90 percent ish.
“My problem is you send someone abroad ,when they return they get promoted and reassigned. Chances of happening…90 percent ish.” – Karl G.
Hmmm…..not very encouraging. Thanks for the feedback. Let us just be optimistic.
We need intitutional memory. My father once headed the Naval Training Center, it was useful for young officers but my observation is everybody gets promoted before the successor gets his feet wet. Those who are left are lower ranked who would not dare teach higher ranked younglings unless this is the movie an Officer and a Gentleman.
ah, the seniority in the armed personnel. sir! yes, sir! those lower ranked can only teach the higher ranked younglings if asked, or if appointed. sir! yes, sir! and the discipline is such that the lower ranked cannot just give unsolicited advice on a whim. they have to show respect to the rank and learn when to open their mouth. exception is when asked, do you have any question, then the lower ranked can answer and show their brilliance. but not to the expense of the higher ranked younglings, example, I think, is ex general nicholas torre! he lost his badge. and then his popularity is such that he was appointed gen manager of mmda. you really cannot put a good man down!
Thanks kb.
Your optimism is appreciated. I also like how you put my pessimism in check.
The limitation is not desire or imagination, it’s money. Health care, education, defense. Subsidizing industrialization. Funding LGUs, a political requirement to get the other things funded. President Marcos is doing well at pressing forward on all fronts. He is constrained by the system, and malcontents like DDS. And China’s propaganda push. It would be helpful if more Filipinos backed him rather than joining the complaints of China and DDS.
“The limitation is not desire or imagination, it’s money.” – JoeAm
I am of a different school of thought. I believe desire/imagination bring in the money. It is in line with the slogan “If there is a will, there is a way.”
Pres. Cory Aquino pretty much expressed that when she addressed both Houses of the US Congress after the fall of Marcos, Sr.
“You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it, and here you have a people who won it by themselves, and need only the help to preserve it…..Today I say, join us, America, as we build a new home for democracy, another haven for the oppressed, so it may stand as a shining testament of our two nations’ commitment to freedom.”
I believe she got a lot of applause for that, if not a standing ovation.
I am not a fan of simply throwing money at a problem, whether one has only a little money or even if one has a lot of money. I like to know first who is getting the money and what they plan to do with it.
Karl has given examples of what the military have done with training and opportunity, and it is not impressive. Basically the examples show wrong use of desire and imagination.
Just my opinion, humble or otherwise.
our military and armed personnel are quite adaptable. they trained for war, but cannot go to war and must show restrained. since they have to work with a team, they have a common goal, their desires and imaginations often may not come to into it. unlike our marines at the rusty ship bp seirra madre stationed at the shoal in west phil, often threatened by china of being hauled away, their desire or maybe want over there, is for their commission to end and for a new fresh batch of marines to take over, but not before they got friend chicken in their next supply of food, and maybe a good haircut too. 3months of nothing but the squealing sea for company is enough to drive one crazy.
Yes, perfection exists in the mind as reality bites. There are many ways to improve money management. But it’s hard to squeeze the billions needed out of the old kamote.
“But it’s hard to squeeze the billions needed out of the old kamote.” – JoeAm
“If there is a will, there is a way.”
It is harder to find the will.
That’s true of most of humankind it seems to me. The question is whether you believe President Marcos is operating in good faith within a system that he did not build. I believe he is. So if he can’t raise the money to make all the improvements idealists expect, the problem is with the system and not President Marcos. So who is it exactly that lacks the will to improve Defense? Secretary Teodoro? He’s one of the best secretaries in the Administration. The generals? Well, is it bad faith not to want to give up their pension plans to fund arms? uh, I don’t think so. Well then, the House that does the budgeting and won’t reduce LGU payments to fund defense? Bad faith? Incompetence? No, reality. Well, how about BIR for not getting more taxes out of the kamote. Lazy? Incompetent? Stuck without good data by the system? Bad faith?
Nope. There is not bad faith except among a few crooks. The system is an amalgamation of historical decisions by leaders and agencies over the years. Even Aquino (both of them) were constrained by it.
Your cavalier call for the “will” to find billions for defense is nonsense. Just complete blather from an ivory tower in a shithole country that operates in bad faith.
**Your cavalier call for the “will” to find billions for defense is nonsense.** – JoeAm
Well let me try an illustration. I recall some years ago, inflation was hitting our household hard and we needed to find extra money to get us through each month. Our cash flow was negative. Since our income was fixed, our will power caused us to look at our expenses and try to cut out things that we thought we could do without. Reducing eating out at restaurants was a big area. We got rid of cable TV and instead got the Over The Air Antenna. We increased the deductibles on our insurances where we could, and in the case of auto insurance we cancelled certain coverages that we felt we did not need like Collision Damage. We stopped some magazine subscriptions…and the list goes on.
That generates extra dollars to pay for other expenses. Nonsense you say….I don’t think so.
Apply that to government. Some estimates put losses to graft and corruption at about 700 billion pesos annually. If you reduce that waste by 10%, that is 7 billion extra pesos to spend on something, amen?
But you need the will to reduce expenses.
In your post, JoeAm, I noticed you did not mention lost revenue to graft and corruption? I believe ignoring that is nonsense. If one recovers 10% of money lost to graft and corruption, that is effectively an increase in the budget of 10%.
CV, I think your scenario (illustrated by your personal anecdote) works well in an ideal situation. I subscribe to this view as well — in theory. The problem is theory doesn’t hold up well when it hits a wall called reality. The reality of the Philippines is whatever idealism existed in the immediate EDSA period (put down on parchment in the 1987 Constitution), the patron-client system not only came back with full vengeance but thrived and grew by hijacking and wrapping itself in the very idealistic language of People Power.
The reality is in the Philippines the President has very little power outside of executive orders and presidential directives, which are immensely constrained by office-level confidential and discretionary funds. The President actually doesn’t have any power to do what you wrote, even if it’s likely the correct thing to do. Congress is controlled by the dynasties. The vast amount of funding flows automatically to LGUs as prescribed by the hijacked Constitutional mandate, reinforced by the Congressional-to-LGU pipeline occupied by the same political or oligarch dynasties. Besides following the “distant metropole” colonial model, later the “Imperial Manila” framing, the Presidency itself is a convenient scapegoat for dynasties that mismanage their NTA funds — PNoy Aquino was thus unfairly maligned, and now it’s happening to Marcos Jr. as well.
So the only choice is creative solutions within the purview of the Office of the President (and when there is a decent VP, the Office of the Vice President). That’s why in my estimation enclaved activity insulated from dynasties is so important. Stuff like PEZA, BCDA, and to an extent the M4GG coalition.
“CV, I think your scenario (illustrated by your personal anecdote) works well in an ideal situation. I subscribe to this view as well — in theory. The problem is theory doesn’t hold up well when it hits a wall called reality. The reality of the Philippines is whatever idealism existed in the immediate EDSA period (put down on parchment in the 1987 Constitution), the patron-client system not only came back with full vengeance but thrived and grew by hijacking and wrapping itself in the very idealistic language of People Power.” – Joey N.
You are right.
The goal of talking about the ideal is not for us to achieve it for that rarely happens. The goal is to approximate it. We talk about ideal systems all the time here at TSOH.
Now as people point out often here at the forum, the Philippines far too often falls way way short of the ideal. But I don’t see that as a reason not to talk about the ideal. Karl’s topics of Capability and Integration deal heavily with ideal situations.
“The reality is in the Philippines the President has very little power outside of executive orders and presidential directives, which are immensely constrained by office-level confidential and discretionary funds.” – Joey N.
Then the President can start where he does have power. I believe that law enforcement is within the power of the executive branch. Fighting corruption is largely within the responsibility of law enforcement. If we have this attitude of “No we can’t” instead of “Yes we can” then our nation is really in trouble.
But political will is important. If we stop at political wish instead of political will, then we will not get very far.
That is just one person’s humble opinion.
“That’s why in my estimation enclaved activity insulated from dynasties is so important. Stuff like PEZA, BCDA, and to an extent the M4GG coalition.” – Joey N.
Yes, those are good ideas. But I see no reason for us to not try and walk and chew gum at the same time.
There are many famous military maxims on the Principle of Pragmatism, most famously observed by Machiavelli:
<blockquote.Now as people point out often here at the forum, the Philippines far too often falls way way short of the ideal. But I don’t see that as a reason not to talk about the ideal. Karl’s topics of Capability and Integration deal heavily with ideal situations.
There’s nothing wrong with talking about ideal situations. However ideals remain idealizations without a way to translate the ideal into real world application — that requires pragmatism. In extreme cases idealization become even less useful abstract romanticization, something the Philippine thinkers since the Propaganda Movement are prone to. Pragmatism necessitates leveraging what is available to gain what is desired.
The French have a military maxim dating back to the Middle Ages (or even prior):
The meaning here of the French maxim is that in a time of crisis both soldier and commander must utilize whatever matériel or personnel are within arm’s reach to accomplish the mission, regardless of quality. Perfection is a discussion to be had when the crisis is over.
Perhaps others here will speak in ideals, of which ideas are their own right; I prefer the practical and the pragmatic that have actual real world effects.
Here’s where you may be misunderstanding some things about how stuff works in the Philippines so perhaps I can help fill us in:
De jure it is what you say, “law enforcement is within the power of the executive branch.” The President is even the Commander-in-Chief, which includes the Philippine National Police, within a on paper highly centralized state. The PNP is a national policing body so that in theory local patrons have less influence on law enforcers. Strict fiscal regulations fill up endless tomes. Numerous constitutionally-mandated independent watchdogs exist to prevent both central and regional power concentration.
However, the de facto situation is that local political dynasties and business conglomerates systematically captured the aforementioned institutions, with Constitutionally-mandated national safeguards transformed into localized political instruments of legal impunity and corruption. A misconception diaspora Filipinos often have, and even local Filipinos hold, is that legal impunity and corruption by dynasties is a function of impunity and corruption alone — it is not. Rather the reality is the other way around: the impunity and corruption serves as a method of elite survival within overall elite competition, and continuing elite survival necessitates expanding patron-client networks further through mechanisms such as “fat dynasties” and intra-regional networks via the partylist system.
While there certainly were seeds of this behavior going back to the Spanish Period and extending into the Commonwealth to Third Republic, the phenomenon is largely a recent one in the post-EDSA power struggle between Cory Aquino and the emerging neo-dynasties. In fact many of most powerful current dynasties were nonexistent or were only minor local players prior to 1987.
De jure, yes, de facto it is not in practice. I’ll attempt to explain how local dynasties invert central authority through totally legal, constitutional methods:
The reason why dynasties and conglomerates have only expanded since 1987 is because the patron-client relationship which starts at a local level is required to perpetuate for its very own survival. More local positions are won by family members or allies. Regulators and auditors sent by Manila are neutralized and woven into the patron-client network. Once the dynasty secures a localized political monopoly, it starts fighting with nearby dynasties to gain more territory. The partylist system is the Constitutional mandate to protect small parties, so dynasties just co-opt or set up new small parties to expand their political reach outward using the very same partylist mechanism. As the political power of dynasties grows coalitions of dynasties form, which is functionally the current Philippine political landscape. Dynasty coalitions are not permanent but temporary and constantly shifting. Congress and the Senate are nearly entirely captured by political dynasties and/or business conglomerates. Why can tandem or trio family groupings in Congress or the Senate exist in the first place? That is due to dynasty expansion outside of the dynasty’s core “home region.” That legislative power is then wielded to water down or outright block transparency bills, defund oversight bodies, and “debate” about the anti-dynasty law for nearly 40 years. All the while, “Imperial Manila” and the Presidency itself are convenient scapegoats for political dynasties.
Yeah, this is reasonable to say. However reality dictates that the walking and chewing of gum would mean keeping the current system as-is to prevent expansion while aggressively pursuing alternative methods of progress in enclaves which political dynasties cannot touch. There is a reason why there is such a “backlash” against Pax Silica. And it’s not a grassroots backlash. It is a backlash by political dynasties that smell money and power, and want a part of it.
“However, the de facto situation is that local political dynasties and business conglomerates systematically captured the aforementioned institutions, with Constitutionally-mandated national safeguards transformed into localized political instruments of legal impunity and corruption.” – Joey N.
Of course…and arguably the most powerful and influential dynasty currently is the Marcos dynasty. So I would suggest Marcos, Jr. work within the Marcos dynasty within the Executive Branch.
Of course this is still in the ideal, for although there are those who would say that Marcos, Jr. is doing an excellent job subject to his limitations, there are those who would judge that he is not doing enough within the power that he does have, including the power of the Marcos dynasty.
I suspect that you can think of more “giants” that Filipinos should run away from.
The Marcos-Romualdez dynasty is indeed powerful in their home regions. However it is incorrect to say that Marcos Jr. controls a unified dynasty of which name he bears, which has more than one political fracture — Marcos Jr. barely has control over the dynastic coalition which he was the head of to win in 2022.
If the political realities on the ground were a monopoly (as under Nacionalista then later Liberal rule, or even under Marcos Sr.’s rule), or if there was a political duopoly of parties as we have here in the US, perhaps the path forward would be much cleaner. That clean reality doesn’t exist in the Philippines. Not where the real power lies in an Anarchy of Families as explored in Alfred W. McCoy’s 1993 thesis by the same name. A Philippine president can be seen in some ways as a modern version of a paramount datu presiding over a raucous coalition of minor and major datus, constituent political actors that don’t always obey and will engineer the toppling of the paramount leader if the coalition doesn’t hold.
Need to work within the system in order to change the system, if one so desires to make the change.
“The Marcos-Romualdez dynasty is indeed powerful in their home regions. However it is incorrect to say that Marcos Jr. controls a unified dynasty of which name he bears, which has more than one political fracture….” – Joey N.
I am sure the Marcos-Romualdez dynasty wields a lot of power in the country now that Marcos, Jr. occupies Malacañang. I would recommend he begin moving (if he hasn’t already) even if only within the powers of his fraction of the otherwise not unified dynasty. And because of the shortness of time available to him, i.e. one term, he needs to move quickly.
The strategy is similar to your advocacy for the special zones – move where your influence is strongest. That does not mean ignore the rest of the country….just move quickly and as effectively as possible in the areas where you can make the biggest impact.
All of this assumes that Marcos, Jr. has the country’s welfare as a priority. That assumption may be wrong, in which case all bets would be off.
I was adamantly anti-BBM leading up to the 2022 election. The sense of loss I felt when Marcos Jr. won was comparable to the loss I felt when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. Just total shock. But later, to my shock Marcos Jr. did try to govern admirably and it was the Dutertes who continued being bad actors. My criticism of Marcos Jr. is that he effectively wasted 3 years prior to the midterms trying to cajole other dynasty heads to move the country in a direction of progress. That obviously didn’t work for the reasons I already mentioned. Besides the Imee Marcos faction of the Marcos family causes continual headaches.
The only pragmatic direction is to pursue enclaving aggressively as that is an area political dynasty controlled LGUs can’t touch. And I’m glad that Marcos Jr. is indeed aggressively pursuing that strategy. Many don’t realize what a diplomatic coup capturing the preeminent position in Pax Silica from Vietnam is. That was all Marcos Jr.’s doing, and I’ll praise him for it. Same goes for taking the pragmatic move in developing Philippine sovereign deterrence by convincing the US to bring in the broader US-led alliance in the Pacific. The major risk is losing the initiative if the Dutertes regain power in 2028. That is why Marcos Jr. sent a signal by openly meeting with Leni Robredo and other M4GG leaders. Progress requires political continuance, even if it’s not a Marcos next time.
“My criticism of Marcos Jr. is that he effectively wasted 3 years prior to the midterms trying to cajole other dynasty heads to move the country in a direction of progress.” – Joey N.
Yes. You would think a Marcos of his age and experience would know what works and what doesn’t work when dealing with other dynasties.
So what would you suggest? Dictatorship to solve all the problems? I’m sorry, but reality rarely conforms with theory.
“So what would you suggest?” – Joey N.
I would suggest that Marcos not have wasted his time with what he should have known would be a waste of time.
Realistically, however, it is more likely he did not waste his time but deliberately used that time to achieve higher personal goals. What those goals are we can only guess. This is an old political dynasty with I believe more wealth and influence than any of the other dynasties.
Certainly that is your right to believe that scenario. That view though only works in innuendo and conspiracy as it cannot be proven — real events in he last 4 years point to something completely different. If Marcos Jr. did have some higher goals outside of the presidency and his presidential legacy, well he sure lost by the looks of it.
haha this is how I imagine CV quoting you: “your right to believe that scenario” – Joey.
Of course I am right! grin
I have regained my patience — for now 😂
“That view though only works in innuendo and conspiracy as it cannot be proven — real events in he last 4 years point to something completely different.” – Joey N.
Cannot be proven is right because as you and JoeAm often remind me, the system is rigged. During the early Marcos years all we had was innuendo and conspiracy theories. By the time we realized the gravity of Marcos, Sr.’s plundering of our hard earned tax money, he had been doing it for years! That is how these dynasties work.
All systems are rigged by those who hold power. The US is rigged. China. Iran. Singapore. The Philippines has more powerless people is all, and they are so weak that they vote against their own best interest. joey was being kind by expressing in conceptual terms the futility of finding knowledge among innuendo and theories, or what I term nonsense.
“All systems are rigged by those who hold power. The US is rigged. “ – JoeAm
So true…and here in the US we see Trump, who holds power, call news that is negative of him as “Fake News” and he calls accusations against him innuendo and conspiracies and yes nonsense. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Just because you cannot prove that a crime was committed does not mean a crime was not committed.
you guys (most of the Filipino middle class) mostly might have just noticed when the utang-fueled party y’all were living in was over.
maybe the growing discontent – with Ninoy’s martyrdom as a symbol starting in 1983 – was more about that than real idealism.
“maybe the growing discontent – with Ninoy’s martyrdom as a symbol starting in 1983 – was more about that than real idealism.” – Irineo
Great point, Irineo. I wonder if any one here would be interested in discussing that point of view? I recall the rallying cry of the People Power folk was “Tama na! Sobra na! Palitan na!”
I am not talking about the idealistic organizers of People Power.. I am talking about a very specific group of people who were indifferent to Martial Law and everything else as long as the (utang-fueled) party went on for them. The full context of my comment, see screenshot, is very important.
Oh, okay, Irineo…the context of my post which you responded to was the allegation that being suspicious or distrustful of Marcos, Jr. is succumbing to innuendo, conspiracy theories and nonsense. Obviously nothing to do with your post, I think.
here it is in full context.. might be you guys just decided to be blind while life was still good for y’all.
“…might be you guys just decided to be blind while life was still good for y’all.” – Irineo
How about you guys…what were you guys doing during this party on a sinking ship of state? Were you not invited perhaps?
And all the while there were these innuendos, conspiracy theories, and nonsense about Marcos, Sr. plundering the nation.
While the full extent of the plundered monies is unknown, most of the money probably not even held by the Marcoses themselves, the mechanism that enabled the plunder is well-known.
That mechanism was a middle class that rose meteorically in the early Marcos Sr. years, fueled by largely foreign debt borrowing. This professional managerial class (PMC), technocrats inside and the professionals outside, looked the other way as long as they benefited directly or indirectly.
It is incorrect to say that People Power was a masa-led movement. People Power was a middle class movement which happened to have a lot of masa onlookers who got swept up in the commotion.
So what initiated the middle class’s late turn against the Marcos Sr. regime, first slowly then meeting its zenith in People Power, where the middle class were some of the most enthusiastic supporters?
Simple: the 1983 debt crisis exploded and wiped out middle class upward mobility. The ability to paralyze Manila in 1986 during the People Power Revolution was very much tied to the middle class PMC withdrawing their consent since now they no longer “enjoyed the utang.” This PMC held the keys to the entire national infrastructure — communications, banks, media, civil service, state apparatus, etc. Once their support was pulled, it was all but over for Marcos Sr. even if he lingered on a little while longer 4 more days.
Of course there were important sparks: Enrile and Ramos defecting, Cardinal Sin’s public admonishment, Ninoy Aquino’s assassination.
But let’s make no mistake, behind the subsequent layers of romanticization 1986 was really a story about middle class backlash against what they perceived as economic betrayal and a realization they had leverage as they operated the levers of state machinery. I do wonder, if Marcos Sr. had somehow found a way to keep the “gravy train” going, if the middle class that brought his regime down would’ve remained enthusiastic supporters?
Thanks for this distinction as to what “popular uprising” was all about.
“While the full extent of the plundered monies is unknown, most of the money probably not even held by the Marcoses themselves, the mechanism that enabled the plunder is well-known.
That mechanism was a middle class that rose meteorically in the early Marcos Sr. years, fueled by largely foreign debt borrowing. This professional managerial class (PMC), technocrats inside and the professionals outside, looked the other way as long as they benefited directly or indirectly.”
— Joey N.
What Joey seems to be saying is that Marcos Sr. was able to rob the banks because the professional-managerial class—the people who ran and worked in the banks—looked the other way. They supposedly tolerated the system as long as they continued receiving salaries and other benefits. Then, when inflation destroyed the value of their salaries and the banks began failing, their support disappeared.
I do not remember it that way.
I do not recall a middle class “rising meteorically” in Marcos Sr.’s early years. My memory is that the middle class was under pressure and gradually shrinking because salaries could not keep up with inflation. What did rise dramatically was a small new class of very wealthy Marcos cronies. These were not ordinary middle-class professionals. They were a limited number of politically favored people who acquired businesses, monopolies, contracts, loans, and assets under conditions unavailable to ordinary Filipinos.
Their share of the money was enormous, and much of it was reportedly kept abroad. It may not have equaled the Marcos family’s own alleged share, but it was still astronomical. In that sense, Joey has a point: many people who benefited from the system did not complain.
I remember a close friend and his wife who were clearly upper middle class. They could afford to buy a lot in Parañaque and build a house. My friend worked for Makati Leasing Co., part of the Ayala group. In those days, if you had the money, you built your own house rather than simply buying one already constructed.
He told me how inflation affected the project even while the house was being built. The first construction estimate would soon become meaningless. By the time a few months had passed, prices for cement, steel, lumber, fixtures, and other materials had increased. He and his wife had to keep putting in more money than expected because the original cost projections quickly became obsolete.
That was the practical reality of inflation. A person might have a respectable job and a decent salary, yet still find that his purchasing power was slipping away. For people on salaries, savings, or fixed incomes, the apparent prosperity of those years could be very fragile.
And on the question of “looking the other way as long as one benefited,” I also remember former Ateneo schoolmates who did not look away. Some were tortured. Some were killed by the Marcos regime. They took seriously the Jesuit ideal of being “men for others,” and they paid a terrible price for it.
The Ateneo itself, as I remember it, disowned some of them in order not to provoke Marcos Sr. They were barred from the campus. That was a painful chapter, because these were men who had acted according to the very values the school claimed to teach.
Years later—perhaps in the 1990s—the school acknowledged its failure and apologized to this group of genuine “men for others.” Some accepted the apology. Others had been so deeply hurt and disillusioned that they could not accept it.
There is also Raissa Robles’s book, Marcos Martial Law: Never Again. It was written in part because, as the Philippine population increasingly consisted of people born after Martial Law, memories of that period were fading and historical revisionism was becoming easier. The book documents the abuses, corruption, and political realities of the Marcos years.
I heard that the Marcos family or its supporters used their resources to buy up copies soon after the book appeared in bookstores. I cannot personally verify that claim, so I would present it as something I heard rather than as an established fact. But the larger concern is real: when people no longer remember what happened, it becomes easier to romanticize an era that many Filipinos experienced very differently.
“I do wonder, if Marcos Sr. had somehow found a way to keep the ‘gravy train’ going, if the middle class that brought his regime down would’ve remained enthusiastic supporters?” — Joey N.
Of course. I have met people who continued to benefit from the system and who remain loyal supporters of the Marcos dynasty to this day, despite the economic collapse and debt burden of the Marcos years.
Marcos Sr. relied heavily on the loyalty of the military to preserve his ruthless hold on power. The military—including the rank and file—was compensated relatively well, at least while the government could afford it. Many enlisted personnel and junior officers, like many Filipinos with a regular income, shared what they earned with parents, siblings, and extended family. That is one of the realities of the Filipino patronage and family-support system.
But as the economy deteriorated under corruption, cronyism, debt, inflation, and capital flight, Marcos could no longer maintain the same material support. Salaries lost purchasing power. Benefits became less meaningful. The ability of soldiers to provide ayuda to their own families and relatives weakened.
The deteriorating economic conditions affecting soldiers and their families may well have contributed to the reluctance of some in the rank and file to fire on their kapwa—their fellow Filipinos—even when they were ordered to do so by Marcos Sr. The effects of the kleptocratic system had reached their own homes. Their parents, spouses, children, siblings, and extended families were also living with inflation, insecurity, unemployment, and economic decline.
That does not mean every soldier suddenly became a supporter of Cory Aquino or understood the full political and economic structure of the dictatorship. But it helps explain why an order to shoot civilians could lose its force. The people standing on EDSA were not abstract “enemies of the state.” They were fellow Filipinos, and they were often suffering from the same national crisis that was affecting the soldiers’ own families.
I don’t hear you saying anything different than what Joey said. It was not the poor who rose up, it was the people with means, who saw their means reduced. Joey’s use of the term “middle class” does not exclude exceptions either poorer or richer, and certainly allows for some to be aware of the problem early on, and being tortured for their astuteness.
“I don’t hear you saying anything different than what Joey said.” – JoeAm
Great! I’m glad we agree with each other.
if one looks at the rise of Marcos Sr., it was the era when people were flocking to what became Metro Manila. Some realized their dreams of wealth while many did not, with rising crime and disorder as a major problem. That Marcos Sr. put drunk istambays in open cages (“selda ng mga lasing”) appealed to the middle class clientele that for the most part voted him, so did his gathering up all private arms and making a bonfire, or his having a drug lord shot by firing squad.
In fact he continued to be someone whom parents wrote to when they felt their kids were exposed too much to certain temptations of modernity. I recall very well how we could no longer play Space Invaders and Galaxians – not even and especially not at the buggy machine at Shakey’s Delta near Quezon Avenue that accepted “singko” (five centavo coins) if thrown in at the right angle, instead of the one peso per game we didn’t have THAT much of. Marcos Sr. had listened to parent’s concerned letters that kids like us where getting addicted to gaming and closed the arcades by decree after trying out a few of the games himself and saying they reminded him of WW2. He ALSO responded to widespread concern about mecha anime like Voltes V, Mazinger Z etc. which the generation of our parents who had experienced WW2 and the Japanese did NOT like for sure by banning them. Author Jessica Zafra joked that was what led our gen (X) to EDSA some years later.
“That Marcos Sr. put drunk istambays in open cages (“selda ng mga lasing”) appealed to the middle class clientele that for the most part voted him, so did his gathering up all private arms and making a bonfire, or his having a drug lord shot by firing squad.” – Irineo
Yes….they were part of his strategy of optics. He used them to take our attention away from his evil deeds.
My, those were the days, eh? Space invaders, LOL.
yet I do recall how subdivisions rose in Metro Manila of those days, especially Quezon City. I think Makoy masterfully (and deviously) played out the up and coming people of those days against the established ones, utilizing ambition and envy. Actually Duterte did something similar, catering to the new middle class coming from BPO and OFW money while offering them the bogeyman of the “elitists” who included the established (often liberal) old middle class.
I have a personally signed copy of that book. Her father was our neighbor Prof. Espinosa of the UP College of Law, one of the few who consistently upheld human rights throughout the regime, something they personally suffered for. Only very few were that consistent.
Maybe Raissa’s mother being an actual ilustrada from Ermita – IIRC either from the Pardo de Tavera or the (Maximo) Viola clan – helped them survive that.
check out the perspective of Karl whose father was military:
the money of the people who went to Ali Mall among other places came from somewhere, and it was not full of rich people.
BTW I did entertain the idea of becoming a “New Society technocrat” in my early teens, as I found stuff like traffic management and flood control interesting – which is why I am quite well informed about technocratic topics involving Metro Manila until now or urban planning in general.
my savings account from 1982 had IIRC 200 PHP, still worth around 50 Deutsche Mark when we left for Germany.
It wasn’t even worth withdrawing from and closing during my visit to the Philippines in 1986.
CV isn’t wrong about the rumors – they got more when the party started cracking. Hardly any of them around 1975 when the social contract between the classes that carried the dictatorship and the regime still held, but later in the 1970s some people noticed cracks.
The Glorietta was a shiny and pristine place, Unimart in Greenhills full of people shopping. Tropical Hut burgers and Magnolia were full of people eating.
P.S. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocs/26/24541 – BTW the anti-rumor mongering decree was even in 1973, older than I thought, even if I do remember it was passed – memories of a kid are not always that reliable. But people getting slowly restless was from the late 1970s onwards (my vibe of the time) and the lifestyle magazine Mr. and Ms. becoming the core of the future Inquirer was yet later.
I find the collective amnesia of the middle class that rose up under Marcos Sr. highly interesting. I’m sure “they knew” where the money came from, just like Filipinos today who accept ayuda from the local political bosses and local dynasties have a strong indication of where the money came from (public corruption) but extend an open hand while looking the other way.
The collective amnesia reminds me a bit about the so-called ”Ghost Units” after the Liberation of the Philippines which supposedly had conducted widespread anti-Japanese guerrilla resistance (e.g. the ”Escolta Guerrillas” and most famously Marcos Sr.’s ”Maharlika Unit”). Everyone knew, yet no one knew anything. There was even a cottage industry in Escolta, Manila with attorneys selling notarized affidavits certifying fake or exaggerated guerrilla service in anticipation of U.S. military back pay (which had not even been promised yet). Out of more than 1 million affidavit “backed” applications, the US Recovered Personnel Division (RPD) and the Philippines Loyalty Room board was only found substantiation for about 250,000 applications. The Maharlika Unit was found totally fraudulent despite Marcos Sr.’s repeated applications which were rejected every time as the alleged unit being completely fictitious. Filipinos have a remarkable ability to tell stories — both true and false.
Is it really surprising then that the main group that powered Duterte’s rapid rise onto the national scene in the mid-2010s were the old Marcosian middle class combined with the new middle class that came into being from OFW, BPO, and the urban PMC? I know a lot of Marcos Sr. era middle class who were ardent supporters of the Marcos Sr. regime, became disillusioned and took part in People Power, swore they were actually against Marcos Sr. the whole time, only to fall back into the same pattern in their later years when all the lofty promises of EDSA did not come to fruition — many became fervent DDS.
IIRC when Marcos Sr. had no other choice in 1983 following the debt crisis, the IMF austerity measures that he accepted in return for rescue funds, which raised taxes on middle class spending and salaries, was the final straw for the middle class that went along to enjoy directly or indirectly the debt-fueled highs of the early Marcos Sr. years. Of course the Marcosian cronies known as the ”Apostles of New Society” getting bailouts only added accelerants to an already smoldering fire when those bailouts came into light.
CV’s anecdotes of course are examples of how cracks were forming in the 1970s in certain areas. In the 1970s there were the dual global oil shocks (1973, 1979) from the emerging OPEC and interest rate spikes that made sovereign loans more expensive, both external. The peso was devalued in order to keep the appearance of the gravy train going. Crony-connected businesses were bailed out while non-crony businesses defaulted with their workers left out to dry. But all of this happened while even if the rest of the economy, especially where loyalists were concerned, was still riding the debt-fueled sugar high all to the early 1980s and the debt crisis in 1983.
When I first learned about the anti-rumormongering decree I had initially thought it had some kind of connection with the 1973 Oil Crisis — in actuality the anti-rumormongering decree was signed in January 1973 while OPEC did not issue the embargo until October 1973. AFAIK the anti-rumormongering decree was targeted to elite whispering at first, but became a useful tool to silence critics more broadly later that year when the 1973 Oil Crisis caused wide inflation-related discontent (I believe domestic fuel prices rose something like 250%).
Excellent refresher on how allocations of authority are not clearcut lines, but a rat’s nest of crossing laws, boards, committees, and agencies. They remind me of the telephone wires in major cities strung together so haphazardly and massively that they seem to be what’s keeping the buildings from falling down.
I did mention corruption. It’s the nation’s “deep state” that permeates much of local and some national politics. To say it exists but should not, as if getting it out were easy, is hallucination.
“To say it exists but should not, as if getting it out were easy, is hallucination.” – JoeAm
Totally agree.
But to say it should be reduced is not hallucination. I think I even gave a hypothetical example of 10% reduction and gave a peso estimate of how much extra money that would be.
Saying Joe ignored graft and corruption because he simply did not directly mention it in a comment is the nonsense part methinks. You always read Joe say corruption is an industry. That is not giving up on corruption that is recognition of a formidable foe in my opinion.
“Saying Joe ignored graft and corruption because he simply did not directly mention it in a comment is the nonsense part methinks. You always read Joe say corruption is an industry. That is not giving up on corruption that is recognition of a formidable foe in my opinion.” – Karl G.
You are of course right, Karl. But the context of the discussion is finding revenue to FUND CHANGE. My point was that one source of revenue is not just to increase taxes, but to reduce waste or theft of revenue BECAUSE of graft and corruption. If you prevent 1 million pesos from being stolen or wasted, you have an extra 1 million pesos in the Treasury to spend.
Not an excuse but here goes. We have strict procutement laws, we have senate investigations hereand there. The ombudsmen sues it takes 20 years…
“We have strict procurement laws, we have senate investigations here and there. The ombudsmen sues it takes 20 years…” – Karl G.
Thanks Karl. I believe you have identified the problem.
Next step: Identify doable solutions.
Third step: Identify who is/are responsible for carrying out the doable solutions AND then hold them accountable.
I remember Pres. Harry Truman used to have a sign at his desk in the Oval Office: “The buck stops here.” It was a play on the expression in Western culture “pass the buck” meaning pass the responsibility on to someone else.
That is how self-governance is supposed to work. If we are not willing to exercise those duties, we should not ask for self-governance.
That is the theory, anyways….. 🙂
As I said in my other comment, I am greatly impressed with SND Teodoro and former CSAFP Gen. Romeo Brawner for their out-of-the-box thinking to get more capability with whatever means necessary. There is a difference between human capability (e.g more practice, better tactics, improved planning) and physical capability (e.g. ships, planes, rocket artillery). Both Teodoro and Brawner in my estimation understand the difference and looked for ways to raise both given the limitations of the Philippines budget.
The result is creative thinking. The result is the US conveniently “forgetting” Typhon launchers, the NMESIS Naval Strike Missile system, HIMARS short range ballistic missile system, drone systems like the MQ-9 Reaper, which enable the new AFP doctrine of distributed mobile (rocket) fires. The result is the US “stocking” EDCA bases with high-end capability-enhancing equipment, for US purposes but of course friends allow each other to borrow *wink wink.* The result is the US bringing in a broader alliance that now trains with the Philippines, giving the AFP to turn learned theory into practiced experience. I don’t believe any of what I just wrote here was done solely by the US, but involved a lot of feedback and advice by Teodoro, Brawner, Marcos Jr., and Amb. JM Romualdez to the US.
I hope to see more of that type of creative thinking. Pax Silica by the way, was the result of the Philippines diplomatic creative thinking leveraging longstanding relationships. Does the Philippines have even close to the industrial capability that Vietnam (the pre-Pax Silica frontrunner) or Malaysia or Indonesia does? Emphatically the Philippines currently lacks such capabilities. But by creative thinking and leveraging relationships, the Philippines has a real chance to leapfrog decades of incremental building that others had to do. I’m all for it. The Philippines is not only an ally but a crucial ally. The Obama-era TPP which Biden revived in another form under Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) then Trump rebranded as “radical burden sharing” is the basis of Pax Silica. I think the broader US-led alliance is starting to realize that too. A strong Philippines means a strong US.
Good portrait of what is going on. Lots. To not recognize that and say the nation does not have the “will” to improve seems to me to be disrespectful. Or nonsense.
“Good portrait of what is going on. Lots. To not recognize that and say the nation does not have the “will” to improve seems to me to be disrespectful. Or nonsense.” – JoeAm
There is a lot going on, AND there is a lot not going on. Keep in mind the symbol of our stand against China’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea – a rust bucket stranded on a low tide reef in the Spratlys. Seems like a good short term solution….but I believe its been there over 25 years!
So you would argue that it be removed? Or built up? Which do you suggest. What are the risks and rewards of each?
“So you would argue that it be removed?” – JoeAm
Definitely not removed for obvious reasons. To remove it would weaken our legal position.
“Or built up. Which do you suggest?” – JoeAm
I suggest that it should reflect the Philippines. If a rust bucket reflects the Philippines, then Filipinos should keep it as it is. If it doesn’t, then improve on it. Perhaps it is “puede na.” That is a status we are often comfortable with. We are a sovereign nation so we can decide if it is “puede na.”
“What are the risks and rewards of each?” – JoeAm
I have explored options with the help of AI including the risks and rewards of each. A major factor in deciding what to do is in the word “escalation.” Both China and the Philippines have to deal with that word.
Let me know if you want to pursue options that the Philippines can consider, or if your question was just pseudo Socratic to quote a term Joey has used with me. I don’t want to waste your precious time or mine with personal assumptions.
No. Escalation has been the main issue for 25 years and the decision has always come down to don’t risk it. That is an example of the reality that you don’t include in your calculations.
I would mention also that this decision does reflect the Philippine constitutional imperative for peace.
“That is an example of the reality that you don’t include in your calculations.” – JoeAm
Thanks JoeAm. Meanwhile, I haven’t made any calculations on the subject (the Sierra Madre situation) here yet.
Ah, but you did by implying the Philippines is likened to a rusty boat, by keeping the rusty boat, and in condemning the nation’s failure to build up defense (which has many real life restraints and a lot of progress), and many other arguments you make that relentlessly criticize with no awareness of the real world situation. You are an ivory tower grinder and I get irked by your failure to hold yourself accountable for good faith discussions, while so easily nit picking and condemning others.
Shameless plug.
May I present to the readers of TSOH: The BEACON EXPO 2026.
https://www.thebeaconexpo.com/
The BEACON Expo & Conference 2026 will take place from September 29 to October 1, 2026, at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, Philippines.
Organized by The Maritime League, this major maritime event focuses on the “blue economy,” maritime security, shipping modernization, and shipbuilding. [1, 2]
Event Highlights
Time to eat my speculative words.
I will focus on the Navy.
Core Naval Training Programs
Aside from the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) and the AFP-wide Command and General Staff Course (CGSC), the Naval Education, Training and Doctrine Command (NETC)—headquartered at Naval Station Leovigildo Gantioqui in San Antonio, Zambales—is the primary engine for the career and specialized training of the Philippine Navy (PN). [1, 2]
Training programs are structured logically across three major trajectories:1. Career Progression Courses (Officer & Enlisted)
2. Functional & Systems Training
Institutional Knowledge Transfer and Memory
Yes, the Philippine Navy has specialized mechanisms to ensure institutional memory, tactical continuity, and structural knowledge transfer. It prevents information loss during routine reassignments via three core entities:1. The Fleet-Marine Warfare Center (FMWC)
The FMWC is the central hub for institutional memory. It prevents operational amnesia through specialized branches: [10, 11]
2. The Office of Naval Strategic Studies and Strategy Management (ONSSSM)
The ONSSSM tracks macro-level institutional logic. It conducts long-term strategic research, analyzes geostrategic trends, and archives institutional insights. This office maintains alignment with major frameworks like the Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept (CADC). [13, 14] 3. Doctrine Writing and Colloquiums
The Navy conducts formal programs like the Doctrine Writing Course to teach officers how to document tactical knowledge. Annual research events and strategic colloquiums ensure that peer-reviewed tactical innovations are integrated into policy updates. [10, 14]
If you would like to narrow this down, let me know if you want to focus on:
[1] https://www.facebook.com
[2] https://www.facebook.com
[3] https://www.facebook.com
[4] https://www.facebook.com
[5] https://www.facebook.com
[6] https://www.facebook.com
[7] https://navy.mil.ph
[8] https://www.instagram.com
[9] https://www.facebook.com
[10] https://navy.mil.ph
[11] https://navy.mil.ph
[12] https://www.facebook.com
[13] https://navy.mil.ph
[14] https://www.facebook.com
Thanks for the info on the Navy. In modern warfare, advanced militaries like that of the US have taken note of lessons they can learn from Ukraine. Trump famously said to Zelensky “You don’t hold any cards.” I believe Zelensky has clearly proven him wrong.
And speaking of navies, how about that “obliterated” navy of Iran being able to control the flow of shipping in the Strait of Hormuz? I believe that there are lessons there for the Philippine Navy. You probably see them better than I do considering your maritime background.
Maybe we can call these “strategies for navies that don’t hold any cards!” hehehe (I can chuckle because I am not in harm’s way…but there are a lot of people in harm’s way who cannot laugh at this situation.)
Contrary to Trump’s claim, the sea mines has not been swept by the minesweepers.
I am not saying that Iran’s Diskarte of sanctions evasion having secondary sanction evaders as allies should be emulated.
This we must leqrn from Iran, reverse engineering and 3D printing.
Our progress with the jeepney is not encouraging it is our constant reminder of starting with a bang but without levelling up incrementally.
Balik scientist is ok but you must create the environment to make them stay.
In 1998, we got 3 Peacocks from the British Royal Navy, but we failed upgrading it in one go. It took 18 years and 3 phases to complete its upgrade.
And we can name all our excuses. Asian financial crisis, Erap’s all out war, Gloria Arroyo’s mismanagement, US Financial crises….
But we can’t play victim and photo op at the first false triumphant moment at the same time.
My earlier example of C130 upgrades which Joey said had alnost zero Pinoy cintributiion, that I refuse to believe.
CV,
I apoligize for giving you wrong ideas by my momentary pessimism on more than one occassion, but you told me to be optimistic on more than one ocassion. I also tell you that I do have high hopes for our inang bayan. Mabuhay tayo!
It is impossible not to have zero pijoy contribution in maintsinance. One beyond economic repair C130 can be cannibalized for parts to salvage the repairable. Until it no longer works, you send it abroad
Same pattern with small patrol crafts from Halter Trinity Marine.
there is much corruption in our military and armed personnel. if repair of military assets is lagging, it is maybe because the fund have gone elsewhere.
AI Overview
Yes, corruption exists in the Philippines military and armed services, though leadership maintains a strict zero-tolerance policy.
Current Status and Official Stance
Historical Context
The whole Navy was once sued by the PH
For a seies of ghost medicine purchase which Col Lachica can just say they are confidential in nature.
My family suffered even with lot of social media happy faces, we did hurt during the two decades of court hearings etc. Ok enough of me time.
“My earlier example of C130 upgrades which Joey said had almost zero Pinoy contribution, that I refuse to believe.” – Karl G.
Maybe Joey meant contribution to technical upgrades to the C130s themselves, possibly with equipment made in the Philippines.
In the 6 day war, the Israelis outmatched superior Egyptian tanks from the Soviet Union. The Israelis had World War 2 vintage Sherman tanks. But that isn’t the whole story. The Israelis had actually upgraded those Sherman tanks. If you AI the details, I think you will be amazed at how much Israeli “desire and imagination” went into modernizing those old tanks. To maybe whet your appetite, let me post a sort of summary from AI:
>>Israel did not invent the Sherman, the French 75 mm or 105 mm guns, the Cummins engine, or HVSS suspension (improvements made to the original). Yet it had a real national technological contribution because it selected the system, integrated dissimilar imported components, performed or organized the conversions, solved operational problems, maintained the fleet, and steadily improved the configuration for its own needs.<<“
I don’t usually like repeating myself as it seems overly pedantic, so I’ll let the following AI factcheck of my previous comment on the PAF C-130 modernization speak for itself.
Claude Prompt:
Claude Output:
Gemini and ChatGPT both produced similar outputs.
My problem with going with the “resilience” and “capability” narrative loosely based on the ancient Filipino culture’s actual, documented performance-conditioned resilience and capability, is that at what point does proclaiming resilience and capability just become an isomorphic mimicry of actual resilience and capability? “Fake it until you make it” can be a viable strategy to open doors of opportunity; I admit as a experience-less working student I used that strategy as did many others. But then I had to put in real, hard work of reading dozens of thousand page manuals per project after work hours and trying to learn from those more experienced than me as quickly as I can.
There is a big difference between announcing capability using language mimicked from think tank and multinational organization language and actually becoming capable. Former CSAFP Gen. Romeo Brawner understood that a national pageantry of acting out kayfabe does not bring real capability, and I was sorry to see him go. I hope his successor Gen. Antonio Nafarrette continues Gen. Brawner’s excellent work. SND Gilbert Teodoro is also another leader who understands how to develop capability, spending more time on getting capability by any means necessary rather than putting out the usual nationalistic words, and his work is invaluable to preparing the AFP for future contingencies in the WPS and Taiwan Strait that seem increasingly plausible.
Ok my stand will be seated now. Thanks
“Ok my stand will be seated now. Thanks” – Karl
Clever!
Not arguing,or talking past each other, but if I may.
I dug through the available fleet records, PAF/AFP and government releases, procurement records, accident databases, and historical aircraft records. The picture is much more nuanced than “the Philippines contributed nothing.”
The strongest conclusion is:
> The Philippine Air Force did not design or manufacture the C-130, and many major depot-level overhauls and upgrades were performed with foreign OEM/contractor assistance. But Filipino personnel accumulated decades of C-130 operational, maintenance, engineering, recovery, structural-repair and sustainment experience. In at least one major case—C-130B 3633—the PAF actually built up a domestic capability to perform C-130 depot-level maintenance and returned the aircraft to service. In 2024–25, the PAF again demonstrated indigenous structural-maintenance capability with C-130T 5040.
There is also strong evidence of a long history of aircraft being stored and used as sources of parts, although I would be careful about assigning particular cannibalized components to particular surviving aircraft without maintenance records.
—
THE PHILIPPINE C-130 STORY
From imported Hercules to accumulated Filipino aerospace capability
1. The beginning: the Hercules arrives
The C-130 became part of Philippine heavy airlift in the 1970s. The 220th Airlift Wing was activated in 1973, became a regular unit in 1975, and its heavy-airlift capability was transformed by the arrival of three C-130 Hercules in March 1977.
The early fleet was a mixture of C-130B and C-130H aircraft, eventually supplemented by civilian L-100 Hercules derivatives.
This is important because the Philippine C-130 story is not merely a procurement story.
For almost five decades, Filipino airmen have had to:
operate the aircraft;
maintain it;
troubleshoot it;
inspect it;
manage its engines and systems;
recover aircraft from prolonged storage;
maintain airworthiness;
source scarce parts;
rotate serviceable components;
perform structural work;
and keep an aging fleet operational under severe resource constraints.
That is a form of industrial knowledge, even when the aircraft itself is foreign-built.
—
2. The historical fleet: every identifiable Philippine aircraft
The best publicly accessible C-130 airframe database currently identifies 22 aircraft associated with the Philippine Air Force, although that list contains aircraft that were civilian L-100s, stored aircraft, and at least one apparent database anomaly. Therefore, it should not be interpreted as “22 C-130s simultaneously operated by the PAF.”
C-130B fleet
Tail Original serial Type What happened
0725 / 3520 58-0725 C-130B Eventually scrapped, recorded March 2012
0738 / 3535 58-0738 C-130B Stored by 2004
3545 58-0747 C-130B Stored
0749 / 3547 58-0749 C-130B Stored by 2003
3552 58-0753 C-130B Stored
294 / 3593 60-0294 C-130B Scrapped by 2012
3633 61-0954 C-130B Major Philippine recovery/depot-maintenance success; returned to service in 2012
0961 / 3646 61-0961 C-130B Stored
3674 61-2638 C-130B Later associated with Colombia as 1014; the Philippine history needs careful reconciliation
The historical database confirms these airframes and their later statuses.
The important point is the number of old B-models that ended up stored.
That is where the cannibalization question becomes relevant.
—
3. The “graveyard” matters
The stored-aircraft records list numerous former Philippine C-130s at Mactan or elsewhere:
0725
0738
3545
0749
3552
294
0961
4512
4593
The database explicitly records some aircraft as stored and describes RP-C97 as stored for parts.
That does not, by itself, prove that a particular surviving C-130 received a specific component from a particular tail number.
But it demonstrates something important:
The Philippines maintained a pool of retired/grounded Hercules airframes.
And that creates exactly the ecosystem in which cannibalization becomes useful:
unserviceable airframe → inspect components → recover serviceable parts → certify/document → return components to supply → install on another aircraft.
This is normal practice in military aviation.
So the claim that every surviving Philippine C-130 consisted exclusively of newly purchased foreign parts is not credible.
What we cannot responsibly say from public evidence is:
> “4726 definitely flew with the engine from 3633.”
That requires PAF maintenance records, component serial numbers and installation histories.
—
4. C-130 3633 is the smoking gun against “zero Filipino contribution”
This is probably the most important aircraft in the entire argument.
C-130B 3633, serial 61-0954, was an old 1961-vintage C-130B.
Instead of simply sending it overseas and paying a foreign depot, the PAF embarked on a major recovery project beginning around 2010.
The project lasted approximately two years and eight months.
And it was not merely an ordinary inspection.
The project included:
> recovery of the aircraft itself and the building-up of a facility capable of performing C-130 depot-level maintenance.
3633 returned to service on December 28, 2012.
That is extremely significant.
The contemporary reporting specifically quoted PAF leadership saying the project demonstrated that Filipino airmen possessed the skills needed to undertake important and technically demanding work.
In other words:
The Philippines did not merely maintain a C-130.
It used a C-130 recovery project to develop domestic depot-level maintenance infrastructure and skills.
That is precisely what a self-reliant defense-industrial strategy is supposed to accomplish.
—
5. Compare 3633 with 4704
The contrast is revealing.
C-130 4704 underwent programmed depot maintenance in the United States, with British Aerospace involved in the maintenance.
The 3633 project, meanwhile, was conducted locally and became the basis for establishing a Philippine depot-level capability.
Contemporary reporting even compared the cost:
approximately ₱594 million for the 4704 maintenance conducted overseas;
versus the locally performed 3633 recovery/maintenance project.
The PAF emphasized the savings associated with local maintenance capability.
This is not evidence that the Philippines could independently manufacture a C-130.
It is evidence of something different and equally important:
Philippine aerospace maintenance engineering.
—
6. C-130H 4704
4704 is one of the important H-model aircraft.
Public fleet records show that it underwent programmed depot maintenance in the United States and returned in October 2012.
It was still part of the active fleet years later.
The 2018 PAF procurement notice is particularly useful because it identifies the five C-130s then being supported:
3633
4704
4726
5011
5040
The PAF allocated approximately ₱58.87 million for environmental-system spare parts and services for those aircraft.
That is another piece of evidence against the simplistic “foreign overhaul = zero Filipino maintenance” argument.
An aircraft can receive a major foreign depot overhaul and then spend years being maintained, inspected, repaired and sustained by its operator.
—
7. C-130H 4726
4726 arrived in the Philippines in the late 1970s and became one of the long-serving H-models.
It underwent programmed depot maintenance at Clark, with Lockheed Martin/Asian Aerospace involvement; the maintenance cycle was completed in June 2009.
This is particularly interesting because it demonstrates a hybrid model:
foreign OEM expertise + Philippine location + Philippine maintenance personnel/infrastructure.
Then came the serious incident.
March 27, 2019
4726 suffered a left-wing fire shortly before takeoff at Clark Air Base.
The onboard personnel were safely evacuated and the fire was extinguished by the base fire service.
It was subsequently regarded in open-source fleet records as non-operational/BER.
And this is where your cannibalization question becomes particularly relevant.
A severely damaged aircraft that cannot economically return to flight can become a parts donor.
But I would distinguish:
Documented: 4726 suffered the 2019 fire.
Strongly plausible: its recoverable components became useful to the remaining fleet.
Not publicly proven: exactly which tail numbers received which components.
That distinction should remain in any serious paper.
—
8. C-130H 4761 — lost in 1993
4761 was another H-model acquired in the 1970s.
On December 16, 1993, it crashed into Mount Manase while descending toward Naga.
Thirty people died.
The aircraft was destroyed.
Unlike a grounded aircraft that remains intact, there is obviously less opportunity for systematic cannibalization after a catastrophic crash, although individual recoverable components may theoretically be salvaged depending on their condition and investigation requirements.
There is no sufficiently strong public evidence for me to claim that particular 4761 components entered another PAF C-130.
—
9. L-100 4593 — the civilian Hercules
This aircraft is sometimes forgotten because it wasn’t a standard military C-130.
4593 was an L-100-20, the civilian derivative of the Hercules.
The Philippines acquired it in 1983.
It subsequently underwent programmed depot maintenance at the Clark Economic Zone, with Asian Aerospace beginning work in February 2004.
Again:
foreign-designed aircraft + Philippine maintenance infrastructure + foreign technical partner + Filipino personnel.
Then came tragedy.
August 25, 2008
4593 crashed into the sea off Davao shortly after takeoff.
All nine people aboard were killed.
The loss was significant enough to reduce the 220th Airlift Wing’s operational Hercules fleet substantially.
—
10. 5011 — the first C-130T
The Philippines acquired two former U.S. Marine Corps KC-130Ts.
The first became:
5011
Original USMC aircraft:
162786 / 83-0504
It had previously served with USMC VMGR-234 and was subsequently stored at AMARG before transfer to the Philippines.
It arrived in April 2016.
But it didn’t simply fly forever after arrival.
In 2018 the PAF sought approximately ₱47.8 million worth of parts and services for repair and overhaul of an engine assembly on 5011.
This is another useful lesson:
Sustainment is itself an industrial activity.
The Philippines did not manufacture the T56 engine.
But Filipino personnel had to:
diagnose the engine problem;
remove/install the engine;
manage the maintenance program;
procure the required parts/services;
perform inspections;
return the aircraft to airworthy condition.
That is not “zero contribution.”
—
11. 5040 — perhaps the strongest modern example
The second KC-130T became:
5040
Original aircraft:
163022 / 84-0477
It entered Philippine service in 2016.
It later received special mission modifications including SABIR — Special Airborne Mission Installation and Response equipment.
The system included an external optical sensor and modifications for observation, while the internal equipment was palletized so that the aircraft could be converted back into a conventional cargo configuration.
That is already more than simple transportation.
It demonstrates:
platform → mission modification → specialized Philippine operational requirement.
—
12. But 5040 also exposes the limits of Philippine self-reliance
5040 underwent its 24th Year Structural Maintenance Program at OGMA in Portugal, beginning in January 2021.
It returned to the Philippines on February 26, 2023.
The work involved extensive repair and overhaul.
So this is the honest picture:
5040 was not completely overhauled in the Philippines.
Portugal provided major structural/depot-level expertise.
The United States and Lockheed Martin were also involved in the broader support ecosystem.
But the story doesn’t end there.
—
13. The Philippines then restored 5040 locally
After returning from Portugal, 5040 underwent another significant maintenance/restoration episode in the Philippines from October 21, 2024 to February 4, 2025.
The PAF returned it to full operational status.
The PAF explicitly described the restoration as demonstrating its commitment to self-reliance in aircraft maintenance.
This is extremely important.
The aircraft had:
foreign depot structural maintenance → returned to Philippines → Philippine maintenance/restoration → returned to full operational status.
So the proper description is not:
> “The Philippines did nothing.”
Nor is it:
> “The Philippines completely overhauled the aircraft independently.”
It is:
> A hybrid aerospace sustainment system in which Filipino technicians increasingly perform higher levels of maintenance while foreign OEM/depot capability remains necessary for certain specialized work.
That’s the defensible conclusion.
—
14. 5125 — the 2021 tragedy
The first of two newer C-130Hs obtained through the U.S. Excess Defense Articles program became:
5125
It arrived in January 2021.
The aircraft had received an avionics upgrade before entering Philippine service.
Then:
July 4, 2021
5125 crashed while attempting to land at Jolo.
The accident killed dozens of people and became the deadliest aviation disaster in Philippine military history.
The PAF immediately grounded its C-130 fleet pending investigation.
Interestingly, the investigation itself demonstrates the breadth of Philippine technical capability: the accident investigation board included pilots, maintenance personnel, medical personnel and other technical specialists, and Philippine recovery teams recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Again, the aircraft itself was foreign.
But the airworthiness, operational, maintenance and accident-investigation institution around it was Filipino.
—
15. 5157 — the replacement H-model
The second EDA aircraft became:
5157
It arrived at Clark on February 16, 2024 and was commissioned in May 2024.
Its original USAF identity was:
88-4404 / 88-404
It is another example of how the Philippines has extended C-130 capability through refurbished foreign aircraft rather than buying everything new.
—
16. The C-130J transition
The next generation is now arriving.
The Philippines contracted for three new C-130J-30 Super Hercules.
The DND announced in 2023 that:
first aircraft — July 2026;
second — October 2026;
third — January 2027.
The contract was reported at approximately ₱22.2 billion.
As of September 2, 2026, I would not yet treat tail 6014 as a confirmed operational PAF aircraft, despite some open-source databases and social-media reports listing it. The official procurement schedule placed the first delivery in July 2026, but I found no sufficiently authoritative PAF/DND source confirming its actual delivery and operational acceptance by today’s date.
That is an important correction to some online fleet lists.
—
17. The fleet therefore falls into several generations
Generation 1 — C-130B
Examples:
0725, 0738, 3545, 0749, 3552, 294, 3633, 0961
Many eventually became stored/scrapped.
But one aircraft—3633—became historically important because it was used to build domestic depot-level maintenance capability.
Generation 2 — C-130H/L-100
4704, 4726, 4761, 4593
These represented decades of operational experience.
Two were lost catastrophically:
4761 — 1993
4593 — 2008
4726 suffered the 2019 fire.
4704 remained an important operational aircraft.
Generation 3 — C-130T
5011 and 5040
These brought newer airframes and specialized capabilities, including SABIR.
5040 subsequently became a showcase for the evolution of Philippine structural maintenance.
Generation 4 — newer C-130H
5125 and 5157
These came through the U.S. EDA/FMF ecosystem.
5125 was lost in 2021.
5157 remains part of the newer fleet.
Generation 5 — C-130J-30
Three new aircraft are being introduced beginning in 2026, marking the transition from an aging legacy fleet to modern digital Hercules aircraft.
—
18. Now, the cannibalization question
This is where we need to be very precise.
There are three levels of evidence.
Level 1 — documented storage for parts
There is direct open-source evidence of Philippine Hercules airframes being stored and at least one recorded as being held for parts.
Level 2 — logically expected cannibalization
A fleet with numerous grounded C-130Bs and a severe shortage of operational aircraft has an obvious incentive to recover usable components.
This is standard military aviation practice.
Level 3 — specific component lineage
For example:
> “Engine X from 4726 was installed in 3633.”
That requires component serial-number and maintenance-record evidence.
I have not found sufficiently authoritative public documentation to establish individual component lineage.
Therefore I would not publish those claims as facts.
But the absence of publicly available component records does not mean cannibalization did not occur.
It means we cannot reconstruct it from open sources with confidence.
—
19. The “parts ecosystem” is actually more important than individual cannibalization claims
Look at what the Philippine fleet accumulated over decades:
Stored airframes
↓
recoverable components
↓
local inspection
↓
repair
↓
parts inventory
↓
component replacement
↓
aircraft recovery
↓
depot-level maintenance
↓
structural maintenance
↓
mission modification
↓
airworthiness management
That is an industrial learning curve.
And it is one reason why simply saying:
> “The Philippines bought American C-130s”
misses half the story.
The other half is:
> What did Filipino technicians learn to do with them?
—
20. What Filipino capability demonstrably accumulated
Based on the evidence, I would classify Philippine C-130 capability like this:
Capability Philippine capability
Flight operations Established
Cargo operations Established
HADR airlift Established
Crew training Established
Line maintenance Established
Troubleshooting Established
Component replacement Established
Engine maintenance management Established
Airworthiness management Established
Accident investigation Established
Aircraft recovery Demonstrated
C-130 structural maintenance Demonstrated
Depot-level C-130 maintenance Demonstrated with 3633
Local restoration Demonstrated with 5040
Mission-system integration Demonstrated with SABIR
Indigenous C-130 parts manufacture Limited/not demonstrated at major scale publicly
Indigenous C-130 design No
Indigenous C-130 production No
Complete independent C-130 depot ecosystem Not yet demonstrated consistently
That’s a much more defensible assessment.
—
21. The real lesson: “self-reliance” does not mean doing everything yourself
This is where the C-130 experience connects directly to the Self-Reliant Defense Posture concept.
A country doesn’t jump from:
buyer
to
aircraft manufacturer.
There are intermediate steps.
The Philippine C-130 ladder looks approximately like this:
Operate
→ Maintain
→ Repair
→ Recover
→ Overhaul selected systems
→ Perform depot-level maintenance
→ Perform structural maintenance
→ Integrate mission equipment
→ Manufacture selected components
→ Manufacture assemblies
→ Design modifications
→ Design aircraft
The Philippines has climbed partway up that ladder.
The 3633 project is particularly important because it shows an attempt to institutionalize the transition from maintenance to depot-level capability.
5040 shows that the capability is not merely historical: the PAF again demonstrated significant local structural-maintenance competence in 2024–25.
—
22. So was there “zero Filipino contribution”?
No.
That statement is demonstrably too broad.
A more accurate formulation would be:
> The Philippines has never possessed an indigenous C-130 manufacturing capability and has remained dependent on the United States and other foreign partners for aircraft acquisition, major depot-level work, specialized overhaul, OEM engineering and many critical components. However, five decades of C-130 operations created substantial Filipino expertise in flight operations, maintenance, engineering, aircraft recovery, component management, airworthiness, structural repair, mission modification and depot-level sustainment. The recovery and return to service of C-130B 3633 in 2012, including the establishment of a facility capable of C-130 depot-level maintenance, and the Philippine restoration of C-130T 5040 in 2024–25 are particularly strong evidence of indigenous capability.
That is much harder to attack.
—
23. And there is an even bigger story
The most interesting conclusion isn’t actually about the C-130.
It is about technology absorption.
The Philippines repeatedly acquired foreign platforms:
C-130 → F-16-era technology → helicopters → FA-50 → naval systems → radars → UAVs → satellites → C-130J.
But historically, acquisition was often treated as the end of the project.
It should have been treated as the beginning of the technology-transfer project.
Every foreign aircraft should generate:
1. Filipino technicians;
2. Filipino engineers;
3. local maintenance capability;
4. local component repair;
5. technical documentation;
6. tooling;
7. test equipment;
8. parts manufacturing;
9. MRO companies;
10. university research;
11. certification capability;
12. eventually indigenous modifications.
That is the difference between buying weapons and building a defense-industrial ecosystem.
The C-130 fleet shows that the Philippines has already accumulated a surprising amount of the foundation.
The failure was that we did not consistently capitalize it into an aerospace industry.
And that may be the most important lesson of the entire Hercules story.
Karl, for some reason your prompt’s output is rather sycophantic even if it basically said the same thing my prompt did except argue in the reverse direction (that “maintenance” = being able to replicate). If one knows how to fix a car that doesn’t mean one knows how to make a car. Need to apply either more tokens or tell the AI to rigorously fact check critically. AIs on “light” mode, especially ChatGPT can be very sycophantic and tell the user what they “want to hear.” My typical usage means that I would only be able to run 1-2 prompts a day on free plans due to critical fact checking that consumes a lot of tokens. Not sure what your usage is.
I never said we asssembled a brand new minted C130 so the anaolgy of fixing and making does not compute.
I included the new-build C-130 as one of the scenarios I analyzed but that’s not what I’ll referring to nor was it the main point. I’m referring to boosting routine maintenance and light refurbishment, conflating it with complete rebuild and technology uplift. It is analogous to doing regular maintenance on a car and thinking one now knows how to build a car. Also, PAF does not have full in-house capability to even do routine maintenance and light refurbishment. As I noted that activity is under the supervision of Lockheed as the prime contractor, using Lockheed technical manuals. Is that level of capability useless? Of course not. It can serve as learning towards more capability if so inclined. I also pointed out that Indonesia has a true in-house indigenization program for their C-130s and many other pieces of military hardware, systematically replacing foreign components with locally produced ones, including high end components like cockpits. I expect eventually Indonesia will be able to do everything when it comes to a C-130 locally, except for the turboprops as turbine technology requires very precise engineering and manufacturing.
I often say that even in license manufacturing there is no tech or knowledge transfer so instead of robot instructions the human eobits should be trained and upskilled. Manufacturing or services. We need to improve our trainjng programs.
**The picture is much more nuanced than “the Philippines contributed nothing.”** – Karl
Thanks for sticking up for the Pinoy on this issue, Karl.
Still wrong though. Misplaced pride continues to do a number on the Philippines. Plenty of things to be proud of. One can even say it’s great PAF can maintain their own C-130s under the supervision and technical knowledge of the US, thus saving money otherwise paid to the party contractors. However it is not correct to substitute empty pride for capability. The truth is in the official government releases themselves, as I pointed out.
So we are not caable end of story.
I asked Gemini about the difference between C-130s in Indonesia and the Philippines and got this:
Maybe the best analogy would be that Indonesia is like Francisco Motors or Sarao when it comes to the C-130 while the Philippines is a skilled talyer shop.
With the caveat that I only heard of this topic in this discussion and finally asked Gemini for a comparison.
We must emulate Iran without the shady parts.But we cant even be Sarao or Francisco whwn it comes to other industries.
We suck, but there us always a chance to stop sucking
If we used to suck at the world cup BBall erase that, Tennis, now we are at euphoric non sucking levels.
“We suck, but there is always a chance to stop sucking. “ – Karl G.
And then there is that rust bucket of a navy ship/Philippine Military Station we have in the West Philippine Sea – BRP Sierra Madre.
It is actually an example of Filipino ingenuity and resourcefulness as it utilizes three things the Philippines has:
1) junk which is what the BRP Sierra Madre is
2) resilience which is what the sailors on it have
3) the ally that the Philippines has since the 1950 MDT
The “rust bucket” is an active ship of the Philippine Navy as long as it has sailors on it.
All China can do is harrass its resupplies but never directly attack it as that would be an act of war and the Philippines could call on the USA.
Depends on what you’re looking for, malls, fiestas, or squatters homes. The Philippines is a mosaic of modernity, tradition, and poverty, a rusty bucket only to those who can’t find the eloquence of sitting under a mango tree laughing through poverty whilst getting slowly smashed on tuba and coke.
Well, the mango tree is after work or on weekends. Most people here work hard, some for nothing, some for a pittance, some for day wages, some as drivers, some as contract workers, some salaried. But work they do do.
“Most people here work hard, some for nothing, some for a pittance, some for day wages, some as drivers, some as contract workers, some salaried. But work they do do.” – JoeAm
So true…unfortunately, productivity is low. That is a problem for leadership to work hard on.
An iconic rusty tribute to peace, sovereignty, and non-escalation. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My wife has pointed out that our neighboring community of Biliran has a number of those old-style wooden two story homes of times past, the wood gray from sun and rain. Elegant. I love those old homes, as I love old style jeepneys, increasingly sneered at by those of no aesthetic judgment whatsoever.
I love the eclectic charm of the Philippines too. Keeps me coming back to visit.
I’ve lived in one so I have no idea what theories you are working on.
“I’ve lived in one so I have no idea what theories you are working on.” – JoeAm
I was working off your fascination with the beauty of the BRP Sierra Madre and the dilapidated old houses in Biliran that are in state of disrepair.
Ah well, scientists often can’t grasp poetry.
“Ah well, scientists often can’t grasp poetry.” – JoeAm
I wouldn’t know. We probably have a lot of poets in the AFP.
CV it is ok to be a poet but avoid being a pwet. We can take a hit but with your multiple jabs and snipes it is frustrating. If you still do not notice,please do.
Thanks, Karl….I get a lot of hits too…it is like in the playground when we were in short pants.
No, peaceful pragmatists. You grind on AFP, sly insults, liken the Philippines to a rusty boat, and deny credibility to the escalation dilemma. You have no moral platform yourself, so can take these contrary positions with no regard for integrity or respect. I find it hard to understand the corruption of your mind.
You don’t seem to have a sense of humor, JoeAm. I don’t know how you survive in the Philippines. If there is one thing I miss about the old country is the Filipino sense of humor.
“No, peaceful pragmatists.” – JoeAm
You forget that poets can be peaceful pragmatists. In fact, I think most of them are peaceful pragmatists.
“You grind on AFP, sly insults, liken the Philippines to a rusty boat, …” – JoeAm
That should not be a problem. A lot of us Filipinos grind on the AFP, and on the Philippines….all the time!! Even you do and you are not even Filipino. Recently Karl did too as in “we suck!”
“…and deny credibility to the escalation dilemma.” – JoeAm
If you re-read my posts you will see that I did not deny any credibility to the escalation dilemma. You somehow read that interpretation into my words. Before inviting discussion into the BRP Sierra Madre situation I was well of the escalation dilemma. If I denied its importance, then I would have misspoken….but I don’t recall denying its importance. If you want to refresh my memory you can copy and paste my words so I can review them.
“You have no moral platform yourself, so can take these contrary positions with no regard for integrity or respect. I find it hard to understand the corruption of your mind.” – JoeAm
Thanks for your respectful judgment. I appreciate it. Helps me improve.
Jeez CV, you were actually being more productive, even a bit insightful the last few days. Can you just go back to that?
Here you are taking others’ words out of context again and trying to fit the words into a narrative. I will volunteer that aside from you, I’m probably the least formally educated here. I hope you realize that everyone else is highly educated and can see through your argumentation style.
Let’s not take stuff out of context, nor quote stuff off of AI as if that makes one an expert in a topic. Doing so is the same as those who quote Bible verses or passages from Rizal without understanding the surrounding context. Let’s not be literalists here.
Thanks for your feedback, Joey. I’m doing just fine with the discussions with pretty much anybody here. If anyone doesn’t like my posts, just ignore them and discuss ideas among others. Seems that is simple enough. That can’t be so hard to do.
Try not to parse a comment. I know a lot of people do, but your approach is different because somehow you tend to take things out of context and I darn hope it is by accident. Try a fresh insight without quoting anyone.
“Try not to parse a comment. I know a lot of people do, but your approach is different because somehow you tend to take things out of context and I darn hope it is by accident. Try a fresh insight without quoting anyone.” – Karl G.
I understand that you would rather I give my own view than analyze someone’s comment closely. I want to be fair and keep things in context. If you think I got something wrong, please tell me which example you mean and share the full context. I’ll try to state my own thoughts more clearly and directly.
Fair enough?
If you understand the escalation dilemma, there is no need to insult Filipinos over the matter. You’d respect the position. There is legitimate grinding and illegitimate grinding. One is aimed at improvement, the other is the critic getting his jollies.
As for a sense of humor, you clearly don’t know me or Angry Maude.
I hope you do find a way to be respectful.
“If you understand the escalation dilemma, there is no need to insult Filipinos over the matter. You’d respect the position.” – JoeAm
Ah, I’m afraid JoeAm you seem to think that the rust bucket is the only way to avoid the escalation drama. I was hoping to get a discussion started at TSOH on OTHER WAYS to achieve the government’s goals w/o escalation and hopefully with more than the rust bucket. I was aiming for improvement (to use your word) on what our government has been doing for over 25 years.
But if you feel that the rust bucket is the only way, I will respect that.
Well, advance your ideas then. Don’t lay back in the weeds expecting others to pull the load while you sharpshoot them. People here are practically begging you to apply your own thinking. They see your potential. You refuse to do the work.
“Well, advance your ideas then.” – JoeAm
Oh, okay. Karl writes an essay of 3 to 4 thousand words and you want me to submit my own ideas and not pay attention to his. Interesting blog model. Bahala na.
When I first came to this group, there was a lady who would be one of the first to give a comment. Her name started with the letter A, as I recall. Basically she would nod and agree, and we wouldn’t hear from her until the next essay. She got along well with everyone. She never said anything that anyone found offense in.
This is a wrong thing to say CV. Ate Arlene previously had more time to comment substantially. Her comments are insightful as they are warm. This is long before you arrived and well into my time here. We should respect that others might be busy with other things — likely family, kids, and at her age grandkids.
I have to wonder, what are you here for? It seems to me you’re looking for entertainment. Have some respect for others, even if you disagree. If you ever disagree, clearly state your case. Now I’m only a simple public university graduate here, but was the education received at Philippine private universities like your alma mater really that deficient back in the days?
“I have to wonder, what are you here for? It seems to me you’re looking for entertainment.” – Joey N.
I am here to learn. That would be the opposite of what you and I believe JoeAm are here for. You folks seem to be here to teach.
I do enjoy learning, so you might say it is a form of entertainment. They say “enjoy your work and you won’t work a day in your life.” Well I apply the same philosophy to my spare time.
I thrive on the principle of “iron sharpens iron.” For example, if I think the BRP Sierra Madre is a poor way of establishing our rights in the Philippine Sea, I like to hear from those who think it is a wonderful way. I like to test my convictions vs. theirs to see if I should change mine. As we with opposing views present our arguments, I often get to sharpen my own arguments, which I see as a good thing.
I do not take opposing views of my argument/positions etc. as personal attacks. I actually welcome them, so long as they are not personal attacks. I welcome someone pointing out why my suggestion is wrong and then substantiate it with more than just stating “because you are an idiot.”
I welcome people quoting me and saying “this is what you said.” It gives me a chance to explain further and I consider it an honor that someone actually read what I wrote.
You will find over time that I am not averse to say I was wrong on something if it becomes clear that I was wrong.
Now, having said all that, I am going to stop here. I have found that I will take the time to write out something to answer a person’s question, and then the person who asked does not even bother to read my answer. Instead they throw back some personal insult.
“Ain’t nobody got time for that!” (that’s an attempt at humor)
Oh, btw, you asked about education in the Philippines. In my private education experience in the Philippines, all the way through 4 years of college, you pretty much could not question the teacher. For the most part, his word was law. As JoeAm has observed: Rote learning.
If you re-read what you wrote here it is all quite reasonable even if I don’t agree with everything. Now if you’d only follow what you have said yourself.
Not so. We are knowledgeable in some areas more than others — and share our knowledge in order to learn from each other. I have invited you to share your own knowledge so that we may understand your own life experiences where the experiences may lead to a better Philippines, but until now you have declined to do so.
I hope this is true, but it does seem that you have certain biases, namely “Marcos bad,” and “Philippines bad, except if a ‘foreigner insults Filipino pride’.” At this point, you are many decades removed from the Philippines. Much has changed. It is concerning when you stubbornly hold onto the past.
Yet when challenged on by you think using the BRP Sierra Madre as a strategy is foolish, and what is the correct course of action, you cannot say. Should the much weaker PN then challenge Chinese ships directly (and get sunk)? Or manufacture an escalation hoping to invoke the MDT (no defense alliance works that way)? Or solely wave around the 1734 Murillo Velarde map (while the Chinese wave around their 1136 Hua Yi Tu map)? Or perhaps we shall all ride out on jetskis to plant the Philippine flag? The grounding of the BRP Sierra Madre is only but one tactic out of the many that the Philippines uses to assert sovereignty over her WPS claims.
Convictions can often be incorrect. It takes humility to see the point of view of others which may be (more) correct, especially when the other view is backed with experience and knowledge.
I and others have plenty of times, explaining stuff from a position of experience to exhaustion, only for you to fall back on biases.
What then if you never realized you were wrong? To be frank, after you discovered AI chatbots that will become sycophantic if pressed repeatedly to validate positions, you’ve only become more stubborn.
Apologies in advance if I sometimes do not answer your long replies. Sometimes you also do not answer my long replies. Notice how I’m the only one who bothers to try to address your points in detail. Have you considered that you may be annoying everyone where? Anyway today I feel patient. Tomorrow I may feel too exhausted to answer. I do not like repeating myself.
Rote learning is the reception of a one-way transmission with the expectation that the receiver just accepts what had been transmitted. Sometimes I have heated discussion, especially with Joe. We are both strong-willed Americans after all. But the exchange is always two-way. With you, sometimes it does seem that you want to push in one direction, while getting annoyed that others don’t uncritically accept your view. That’s just rote teaching in another form, except here we are peers in discussion, not passive students.
Thanks for your response, Joey. In one sense I would love to respond to your points. In another sense I know it would be a waste of both our times. Been there, done that. Let’s just go back to discussing the Philippines instead of me and you.
Meanwhile, JoeAm has warned that his patience has hit rock bottom with my participation here, so I have to be careful especially when I disagree. You know, Joe’s rules.
Arlene. Long time member if the Society. Intelligent, good heart. What’s the point?
Yes, I’d like to read your original ideas and findings. You ask others to discuss and comment on topics you find interesting, but won’t put your own effort and skin in the game? What’s your value here? Answer carefully because my patience with you has hit rock bottom.
“You ask others to discuss and comment on topics you find interesting, but won’t put your own effort and skin in the game?” – JoeAm
I do put effort and skin in the game through my comments on subjects that interest me. When someone takes the time to post an essay—or to make a thoughtful comment on one—I see nothing wrong with responding to it, including by questioning its assumptions, feasibility, or likely consequences.
I have reviewed the blog’s Policies and Terms and see no rule that says a commenter must write an essay, initiate a topic, or present a fully developed counterproposal before offering criticism. Identifying a weakness in a proposed solution can itself be a useful contribution to discussion. A proposal should be able to withstand respectful scrutiny.
Of course, when I have an alternative or a constructive suggestion, I am happy to offer it. But a commenter need not have a complete replacement plan in hand to point out that a particular proposal may not work as presented. I put effort and thought into my participation, even when my role is to test an idea rather than to originate one.
OK, let us check your specific “rust bucket” scrutiny:
Karl already has something about it in the article and you are implying the weaknesses of the BRP Sierra Madre have been omitted by us.
That is a reasonable answer. Your other comment that “Joe rules” is an unnecessary snide aspersion. If you took the time and put in the effort to publish an enduring, meaningful discussion blog, you would recognize that managing the discussion content is necessary in a world of emotionalized nonsense, trolls, spammers, and malcontents. This is not a free forum. Fit in or get out.
thanks for this clear statement Joe. What I appreciate a lot about TSOH is being able to discuss WITHOUT having to watch for every statement being bulletproof.
Of course I know how to make statements bulletproof even if it is hard work, I was after all raised in the Marcos Sr. era where the style of argumentation that nitpicked was very much the norm, but as our search for knowledge here is something we do “off duty” I prefer it the way it is here as way more productive.
Yes. I suppose there are some who would read my statement as “building an echo chamber”, but it means, really, be of good faith. The arguments always fit if they are of good faith. Good faith includes respect. And the latitude to be imperfect.
even as I first termed the late Edgar Lores as “pedantic”, I came to appreciate his attention to detail a lot as he actually took the time to enumerate the different things each of us talked about – even the extremely chaotic stuff I commented here a decade ago – and also put his own pros, cons and enhancements into the mix, I learned a lot for my own present thinking from him. Joey too is a critic but builds on things, and is focused on concepts not merely details.
I too hate flexing chest thumping PR but I am not always right on that Misplaced orcfalse credit grabbibg is different from superficial degree of mababaw ang kaligayahan it is having a moment of jumping for glee. One is allowed a hang-over. You hate incorrectness, you are not always right.
I strive to stay correct. My career depended on delivering correct results.
Btw I am not accusing *you* of pridefulness or bias. I’m very curious why your prompt came out that way when I ran the prompt, as well as a “PNA style” prompt, on highest model with maximum token usage through Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and a custom LLM my company is developing, and the results were more or less the same. So what I’m saying is that the way you have your client set up may have inadvertently be using looser parameters.
https://www.philstar.com/business/2026/09/02/2553329/mayabang-kasi-tayo
“This we must learn from Iran, reverse engineering and 3D printing.
Our progress with the Jeepney is not encouraging it is our constant reminder of starting with a bang but without leveling up incrementally.
Balik scientist is ok but you must create the environment to make them stay.” – Karl G. Interesting, Karl. I would love it if you would elaborate a bit on your point.
I thought I alrwady gave you an overdise when it comes to capabiliity fragmentation and integration.
We invite our our scientist back for what? For a photo op contract signing snd ribb
on cutting?
We start with a bang with innovation the jeepney is just the tip of the iceberg of ningas cogon and pwede na yan?
It became the wrog template of innovation.
Never too late.
Also my ground hog day sysypian programs.
It seems like there is no continuity.
A program gets renamed is ok, but to throw everythijg away in the name of ownership and back to zero is bad.
Thanks for the additional info, Karl. Looks like we are not up to the challenges you present in your essays. C’est la vie. Tuloy ang laban.
We lack naval architects but we still get to be Top five boat builder all because we built foreigb designed ships most of the time.
Now there is automation and AI do we stop producng Naval architects, No.
We need at least s few thousand more from out currwnt 1k plus
We should prepare to build our own.
We could hire foreign instructors
upskill the welders the apprentuces the technicians ladderized learning until they pass the board exams.
In my mentsl health article
Joe said no one wants to be called crazy so no market for psychiatrista so jo one enrolls in psychiatry.
So why doesnt anyone want to he a naval architect?
No training berths? We have simulators now and holograms tomorrow and digital twins as well.
maybe things will work for the better.
For now AI multiplies job loads of those left standing because few are upskilled. Upskill more people less job losses.
Also going back to Cobol, Assembly and old school
The 50 something average age of American legacy programmers is a goldmine we do not want India to have all of.
It has been that way since the Y2k bug.
So long as Businesses and institutions do not change what works they stay and IBM and Accenture says Cashing Cashing!
Yes, legacy languages like Assembly and COBOL are still taught in the Philippines, but their presence in standard academic curricula has shifted significantly. While mainstream universities and TESDA have largely moved their core focus to modern stacks (like Python, Java, and JavaScript), legacy programming remains accessible through specialized academic modules, legacy TESDA course registries, and corporate training pipelines. [1, 2]
The market demand you mentioned from tech giants like IBM and Accenture—especially in the banking, insurance, and enterprise mainframe sectors—keeps these languages highly relevant and lucrative. [3, 4]
——————————
## 1. Universities and Colleges (BSCS / BSIT / BSCpE)
Most Philippine higher education institutions do not offer full, dedicated courses for COBOL anymore, but they are still encountered in specific ways: [5, 6]
*
* Assembly Language: This is actively taught as a core requirement in Computer Engineering (BSCpE) and Computer Science (BSCS) programs. It is embedded inside subjects like Computer Architecture, Organization, and Low-Level Programming to teach students how hardware interacts with software. [5]
* COBOL: Rarely taught as a standalone major subject today. Instead, it is usually introduced briefly in elective courses like Comparative Programming Languages or History of Computing. [5, 6, 7]
*
## 2. TESDA (Technical-Vocational Sector)
TESDA structurally recognizes the corporate need for mainframe developers, but finding active, open classes requires targeting specific institutions. [8]
*
* Registered Framework: TESDA officially maintains an advanced curriculum framework titled Career Entry Course for Software Developers NC IV Using COBOL. [8, 9]
* Availability: While the curriculum exists, very few Technical Vocational Institutions (TVIs) actively run it because finding qualified instructors is difficult. Select branches of larger IT schools (like [AMA Computer College](https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11rjw32t3j) or [Saint Mark Technical Vocational Institute](https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/g/11jsp2vvk7)) have historically registered this program. Most public TESDA slots focus on standard Programming NC IV or cloud technologies. [1, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]
*
## 3. The Real Pipeline: Corporate Bootcamps
Because standard schools cannot keep up with the specific mainframe talent shortage, the market relies heavily on a “Hire-to-Train” model: [1, 6]
*
* Companies like IBM, Accenture, DXC Technology, and Capgemini hire fresh IT, Engineering, or Math graduates based on their logical thinking and problem-solving skills rather than prior COBOL knowledge.
* Selected hires are put through intensive, paid internal corporate bootcamps where they learn COBOL, JCL, CICS, and DB2 from scratch. [2, 6, 13]
*
——————————
## Comparison of Learning Paths in the PH
| Metric | Universities / Colleges | TESDA Centers | Corporate Bootcamps |
|—|—|—|—|
| Primary Focus | Assembly (Core), COBOL (Brief overview) | Generic Programming NC IV (COBOL frameworks exist but are rare) | Full Enterprise COBOL & Mainframe Stack |
| Cost | Regular Semestral Tuition | Free (if under scholarship) to low-cost | Paid by the company (You get a salary while learning) |
| End Goal | Degree & Foundational Logic | National Certificate (NC) IV | Immediate deployment to IBM/Accenture projects |
——————————
If you are looking to break into this niche market, let me know your current background so I can recommend the right path:
*
* Are you a fresh graduate or looking to shift careers?
* Do you want to learn Mainframe/COBOL or hardware-level Assembly?
* Would you prefer self-study resources (like IBM’s free courses) or local company bootcamps?
*
[1] [https://stackoverflow.blog](https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/04/20/brush-up-your-cobol-why-is-a-60-year-old-language-suddenly-in-demand/)
[2] [https://www.linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ana-sab%C3%B3ia-de-castro-09708a14_cobol-mainframe-legacysystems-activity-7288884139972259840-EWe_)
[3] [https://www.reddit.com](https://www.reddit.com/r/PinoyProgrammer/comments/qafu7f/is_cobol_worth_learning/)
[4] [https://alexmarket.medium.com](https://alexmarket.medium.com/the-3-trillion-training-gap-is-cobol-education-broken-3a821a9ddbaa)
[5] [https://www.quora.com](https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-universities-that-still-teach-Assembly-Ada-COBOL-Fortran-and-VHDL-in-their-computer-science-courses)
[6] [https://www.quora.com](https://www.quora.com/Is-COBOL-still-commonly-taught-in-college-computer-science-or-software-engineering-courses-Should-it-be)
[7] [https://www.quora.com](https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-universities-that-still-teach-Assembly-Ada-COBOL-Fortran-and-VHDL-in-their-computer-science-courses)
[8] [https://www.foi.gov.ph](https://www.foi.gov.ph/agencies/tesda/request-for-data-about-the-availability-of-cobol-certifications-under-tesda/)
[9] [https://tesdatrainingcourses.com](https://tesdatrainingcourses.com/ama-computer-college-mandaluyong-campus.html)
[10] [https://www.tesda.gov.ph](https://www.tesda.gov.ph/Tvi/Result?page=2¤tFilter=programming)
[11] [https://e-tesda.gov.ph](https://e-tesda.gov.ph/course/index.php?categoryid=21)
[12] [https://www.courses.com.ph](https://www.courses.com.ph/programming-nc-iv-tesda-course-philippines/)
[13] [https://www.facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com/groups/itphil/posts/1928090074521805/)
THE UNEXPECTED SURVIVAL OF COBOL
Why Legacy Programming Still Matters in the Philippines
By Karl M. Garcia
We often assume that old technology disappears when something newer comes along. COBOL proves otherwise.
Python, Java, JavaScript, cloud computing and artificial intelligence dominate today’s technology education in the Philippines. Yet COBOL and mainframe systems continue to support critical operations in banking, insurance, government and other large enterprises. The code may be decades old, but the systems built around it can still be too important, complex and expensive to simply replace.
The Philippine education system has understandably shifted toward modern programming. Assembly remains relevant, particularly in computer engineering, because it teaches how software interacts with hardware. COBOL, however, has largely moved from mainstream curricula into specialized training and corporate programs. TESDA has even maintained a COBOL-specific software-development training framework, although actual training availability is limited.
This creates an unusual opportunity.
Companies do not always need graduates who already know COBOL. They can hire people with strong programming, analytical and problem-solving skills and train them in COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS and mainframe operations. Major IT-BPM companies in the Philippines have used this kind of hire-and-train model.
The opportunity is bigger than maintaining old code. As companies modernize, they need people who can connect legacy systems to APIs, cloud platforms, analytics and AI. Someone who understands both the old and new technology stacks can become a legacy-systems modernization specialist, not merely a COBOL programmer.
The lesson for the Philippines is therefore not to bring back COBOL as a mainstream programming language. It is to preserve technological continuity.
Universities should teach strong computing fundamentals. TESDA can provide specialized legacy-system training. Industry can provide production-level mainframe experience. Together, they can turn an aging technology base into a specialized export capability.
Old technology is not necessarily obsolete technology. Sometimes it is infrastructure that the modern world still quietly depends on. The countries that learn how to understand, maintain and modernize that infrastructure will continue to find value in it.
Top 5 ship builder by raw tonnage *
Capability language is just fine as long as it’s an impetus to increase actual capability. That language is not fine when it enables one to laud their own laurels as if the legitimate effort done so far is the greatest thing ever. If one is already the best, why need to get better? Thus is the capability language trap.
The Philippines ship building industry is largely foreign-owned, foreign-managed, foreign-technology building bulk carriers on contract to foreign buyers which are the simplest type of major commercial ship. The industry has been stuck at that level for decades and can’t seem to even domestically manage its own shipyards much less advance to more capable ships, like let’s say South Korea which started building bulk carriers IIRC *after* the Philippines started building from originally American-built shipyards. A bulk carrier is literally a metal box with an engine. Important for sure, but nothing much to learn here in terms of increasing capability.
@CV,
This is a good reinforcement to my answer to you for elaboration.
THE BERTH PROBLEM IS ONLY HALF THE PROBLEM Why the Philippines Must Rethink Maritime Education
The Philippines has long faced a paradox in maritime education: we produce enormous numbers of aspiring seafarers, yet training berths remain insufficient. Even after the Supreme Court ruling requiring one training ship per maritime school, the fundamental problem has not disappeared. More than a legal mandate is needed to create a sustainable maritime education system.
Times have changed.
A maritime school does not necessarily need to own a ship simply to provide every aspect of practical training. Shipping-line partnerships, shared training vessels, structured cadetship programs, high-fidelity simulators, virtual reality, digital twins and other technologies can now complement actual time at sea. These tools can make training more accessible, standardized and technically sophisticated.
But technology cannot eliminate the need for real ships and real maritime experience. A simulator can reproduce navigation, engine-room operations and emergencies; it cannot completely reproduce the physical, operational and human realities of working aboard a vessel.
That brings us to the more uncomfortable question: Do we simply have too many maritime schools?
The answer may be yes.
The Philippines has built a massive maritime education sector around the country’s reputation as a global source of seafarers. But producing more graduates is not automatically the same as producing more qualified maritime professionals. If schools compete for students while the industry cannot provide enough quality berths, the system creates a bottleneck: too many aspirants chasing too few opportunities for actual sea experience.
Consolidation therefore deserves serious consideration.
Some schools may need to merge, specialize or eventually close—not as a punishment, but as part of raising standards. The objective should be fewer, stronger and better-connected maritime institutions, with adequate faculty, equipment, simulators, laboratories and access to genuine sea training.
And the problem is broader than seafarers.
The Philippines also needs more naval architects, marine engineers, marine officers, ship designers, shipyard technicians, marine surveyors, maritime technologists and other specialized professionals needed to build, maintain, operate and regulate a modern maritime industry.
This is where maritime education should evolve from a seafarer-production model into a maritime-capability model.
The country should not measure success by how many maritime graduates it produces. It should measure success by whether those graduates can actually obtain quality training, pass international standards, find productive employment and contribute to a Philippine maritime industry that does more than supply manpower.
The goal is not more maritime schools. It is more maritime capability.
That means using technology where technology works, partnering with shipping companies where industry experience is indispensable, consolidating schools where capacity is excessive, and expanding programs where genuine shortages exist.
The Philippines does not need to produce more people merely called seafarers.
It needs to produce the people who can operate, design, build, manage and eventually lead the maritime industry of the future.
LEARN FROM EVERYONE, COPY NO ONE Lessons from Türkiye, South Korea and Singapore
Again, I say it: learn from everyone, understand everything—but copy no one.
The Philippines does not lack examples to study. Around the world, countries have faced problems remarkably similar to ours and found different ways to overcome them. We should study those experiences—not to imitate them blindly, but to understand the principles behind their success and determine what can work for us.
Three countries alone—Türkiye, South Korea and Singapore—are already a treasure chest of lessons.
Türkiye teaches us what a country can do with strategic geography, a maritime tradition, defense industries and a willingness to build domestic capability. South Korea demonstrates how sustained industrial policy, education, technology acquisition and disciplined execution can transform a relatively poor country into a technological and industrial power. Singapore shows what can happen when geography, governance, logistics, ports, human capital and long-term planning are deliberately integrated into one national system.
But the lesson is not to become another Türkiye, South Korea or Singapore.
We cannot. And we should not.
Our geography is different. Our history is different. Our institutions, resources, population, culture and strategic environment are different.
The real question is: What did they understand that we can learn from?
And perhaps the most important lesson is learning what to do with what we have actually been given.
The Philippines is an archipelago with enormous maritime space, a young population, a strategic location, abundant natural resources, agricultural land, a large ocean economy and a substantial overseas workforce. We have universities, ports, shipyards, industrial estates, technology companies and millions of people with skills and experience acquired both here and abroad.
We also have things that are old, inefficient or seemingly obsolete.
So what do we do with them?
Suppose someone gives us an old ship.
Do we simply leave it at the dock until it rusts away?
Or do we inspect it, determine what remains useful, salvage what can be salvaged, retrofit what can be upgraded, and learn from its weaknesses? Perhaps it can become a training vessel, a research platform, a museum, a patrol auxiliary—or provide components and knowledge for something better.
An old ship is not automatically worthless.
The same principle applies to industries, infrastructure, institutions, technologies and even ideas.
Development is not always about throwing everything away and starting from zero. Sometimes it is about conversion, adaptation, upgrading and recombination.
That is one reason the experiences of Türkiye, South Korea and Singapore matter. They did not begin with everything they have today. They built capability progressively. They learned, adapted technology, developed institutions, invested in people and made increasingly sophisticated use of their existing advantages.
The Philippines should do the same—but in a distinctly Philippine way.
We should look outward without losing sight of what is already in our hands.
Learn from everyone. Understand everything. Copy no one.
The objective is not imitation.
It is capability.
And the ultimate test of development is whether we have learned to turn what we have—old and new, abundant and scarce, inherited and acquired—into something more valuable, more resilient and distinctly our own.